Sketching Drawing – The Best ‘Artists Eye' Tool

There is an old saying "You never stop learning" and this is so true when it comes to developing your ‘Artists Eye'. As with most skills of value, developing your ‘Seeing' without appropriate help can take a very long time and so, when learning drawing, it is better to have a quicker method.

The ‘Artists Eye'

What do we mean when we say "with an Artists eye"? Usually, we use this expression to differentiate between the normal, day to day, looking at the world (which all normally sighted people do) and that special way of seeing the world that creative artists from all mediums use. When you look at the world through your artists' eye you see much more than you do when simply going about your daily routine. This is because a trained artist has learned how to really see the world around them in terms of: light and shadow, forms, shapes, lines, colour, proportions, perspective, negative space, and the whole gamut of visual perception tools. With our artists eye we see the world in all of its glory!

How to develop your own Artists eye

The problem when learning drawing is that it takes time to understand and then control the role of our dominant left-brain and its affect on our ability to see in that special artists way. Another issue we have to contend with is how we actually see our surroundings. When we look at a scene we do not take in the whole scene at one go (like a camera does when making a photograph) but instead gather the visual information in smaller units. These parts are then assembled in our mind to form the full impression of the scene. Our eyes actually use a method of rapid movement called saccadic eye movement; your eyes constantly scan the scene to gather information from the various parts to form the whole picture. This is perfectly natural and essential.

However, for an artist wanting to draw a scene or subject it is necessary to concentrate our attention on a limited part of the scene, the area within our format limits, and gather the information necessary to make our drawing. Part of your development as an artist needs to be focussed on increasing your observation skills. Learning to really see the world; and not just look at it.

The best ‘Artists Eye' tool

In my experience of teaching art subjects, and drawing in particular, I have found that the single most powerful aid to developing your artists' eye (and your ability to concentrate on the essential part of the scene) is a viewfinder card. A viewfinder can be the simplest and cheapest tool you will ever use. The viewfinder is simply a rectangular (or square) piece of thin black card with a rectangular hole in the middle. The viewfinder card can be any size (I use a piece about 10x8 inches for drawing and a smaller 4x3 version for practice purposes) with an appropriate sized rectangular aperture in the centre. Try the 10x8 inch card with a 5x4 inch aperture in the centre (whatever size of card you use you need a fairly wide black border around your centre aperture).

To use the viewfinder for training your artists' eye, simply hold it about 12 to 15 inches in front of an open eye (close the other eye) and carefully compose a pleasant scene within the aperture. Move around to change your viewpoint and explore various subjects and compositions. You will be amazed at how this simple device helps you concentrate on what is important in the composition and exclude everything else outside the scene.

The viewfinder works because the black border isolates within the centre aperture just the area of the larger scene that you want to include in your composition. Once you have practiced with the viewfinder for a short while, you will begin to see things that you hadn't noticed before. This indicates that your powers of observation and your artists' eye are developing.