DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2012/06/08

Mastering Life: Zhuangzi’s Parables of Craft

Filed under: Art and Philosophy,Homage: Writers — Tags: , , , , , — fred @ 07:50

Zhuangzi is a collection of parables and philosophical dialogues on Daoist themes, dating to the third or fourth century BCE, and attributed to a writer named Zhuang or Zhuangzi or Chuang Tzu.  Much of the material is satirical or fantastical, using wild imagery, odd turns of phrase, and absurdity to crack conventional and complacent ways of thinking.  It mocks the Confucian impulse to reform the world as well as the logician’s claims to pure reason (even though it often puts its arguments in the mouth of Confucius and other traditional sages).  It argues for radical acceptance of the world, suggesting that we should give up complaining and striving, and instead seek to discover our oneness with the mysterious forces that make and move the world.

Zhuangzi likes to find transcendent principles in humble places, and many of the stories talk about the special skills of servants and artisans.  I find these passages particularly relevant to the creative practice, though of course they are metaphors that can lend their meaning to many aspects of life.  In this post, I’ve selected four parables of craft from the Zhuangzi.  These excerpts are from Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Columbia University Press, 1964, translated by Burton Watson, a version both scholarly and literary, rollicking and lucid.

Bell Stand, 2012, by Fred Hatt

1.

Woodworker Ch’ing carved a piece of wood and made a bell stand, and when it was finished, everyone who saw it marveled, for it seemed to be the work of gods or spirits.  When the marquis of Lu saw it, he asked, “What art is it you have?”

Ch’ing replied, “I am only a craftsman – how would I have any art?  There is one thing, however.  When I am going to make a bell stand, I never let it wear out my energy.  I always fast in order to still my mind.  When I have fasted for three days, I no longer have any thought of congratulations or rewards, of titles or stipends.  When I have fasted for five days, I no longer have any thought of praise or blame, of skill or clumsiness.  And when I have fasted for seven days, I am so still that I forget I have four limbs and a form and body.  By that time, the ruler and his court no longer exist for me.  My skill is concentrated and all outside distractions fade away.  After that, I go into the mountain forest and examine the Heavenly nature of the trees.  If I find one of superlative form, and I can see a bell stand there, I put my hand to the job of carving; if not, I let it go.  This way I am simply matching up ‘Heaven’ with ‘Heaven.’  That’s probably the reason that people wonder if the results were not made by spirits.”

Ferryman, 2012, by Fred Hatt

2.

Yen Yüan said to Confucius, “I once crossed the gulf at Goblet Deeps and the ferryman handled the boat with supernatural skill.  I asked him, ‘Can a person learn how to handle a boat?’ and he replied, ‘Certainly.  A good swimmer has acquired his ability through repeated practice.  And, if a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before and still he’ll know how to handle it!’  I asked him what he meant by that, but he wouldn’t tell me.  May I venture to ask you what it means?”

Confucius said, “A good swimmer has acquired his ability through repeated practice – that means he’s forgotten the water.  If a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before and still he’ll know how to handle it – that’s because he sees the water as so much dry land, and regards the capsizing of a boat as he would the overturning of a cart.  The ten thousand things may all be capsizing and turning over at the same time right in front of him and it can’t get at him and affect what’s inside – so where could he go and not be at ease?

“When you’re betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill.  When you’re betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim.  And when you’re betting for real gold, you’re a nervous wreck.  Your skill is the same in all three cases – but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside considerations weigh on your mind.  He who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside.”

Herder of Sheep, 2012, by Fred Hatt

3.

T’ien K’ai-chih said, “I have heard the Master say, ‘He who is good at nourishing life is like a herder of sheep – he watches for stragglers and whips them up.’ ”

“What does that mean?” asked Duke Wei.

T’ien K’ai-chih said, “In Lu there was Shan Pao – he lived among the cliffs, drank only water, and didn’t go after gain like other people.  He went along like that for seventy years and still had the complexion of a little child.  Unfortunately, he met a hungry tiger who killed him and ate him up.  Then there was Chang Yi – there wasn’t one of the great families and fancy mansions that he didn’t rush off to visit.  He went along like that for forty years, and then he developed an internal fever, fell ill, and died.  Shan Pao looked after what was on the inside and the tiger ate up his outside.  Chang Yi looked after what was on the outside and the sickness attacked him from the inside.  Both these men failed to give a lash to the stragglers.”

Confucius has said, “Don’t go in and hide; don’t come out and shine; stand stock-still in the middle.”  He who can follow these three rules is sure to be called the finest.  When people are worried about the safety of the roads, if they hear that one traveler in a party of ten has been murdered, then fathers and sons, elder and younger brothers will warn each other to be careful and will not venture out until they have a large escort of armed men. That’s wise of them, isn’t it?  But when it comes to what people really ought to be worried about – the time when they are lying in bed or sitting around eating and drinking – then they don’t have sense enough to take warning.  That’s a mistake!”

An Ox, 2012, by Fred Hatt

4.

Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui.  At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee – zip! zoop!  He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.

“Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wen-hui.  “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”

Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill.  When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself.  After three years I no longer saw the whole ox.  And now – now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes.  Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants.  I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are.  So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

“A good cook changes his knife once a year – because he cuts.  A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month – because he hacks.  I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone.  There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife really has no thickness.  If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room – more than enough for the blade to play about in.  That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until – flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground.  I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”

“Excellent!” said Lord Wen-hui.  “I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!”

 

Illustrations for this post are all ink brush on paper, 18” x 24” (46 x 61 cm).

An earlier Drawing Life post, “A Useless Tree”, is based on another tale from Zhuangzi.

Note:  There are several editions of Burton Watson’s Complete Works of Chuang Tzu and Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings.  The latter is basically a selection of chapters from the former.  A newer edition of Basic Writings has been amended to use the pinyin transliteration of the Chinese names (i.e. Zhuangzi replaces Chuang Tzu) in the title as well as in the text.  Zhuang has inspired many writers, and besides the various academic translations there are selections of his stories retold by Christian mystic Thomas Merton and Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.

2012/05/03

Navigational Perception

Filed under: Studying Perception — Tags: , , , , , , — fred @ 14:17

Marshall Islands stick chart, a map of islands, ocean swells, and currents, original source of photo unknown

Synchronicity is a concept describing how seemingly unrelated things take on meaning by being experienced concurrently.  Years ago a friend gave me the Fall 1991 issue of the magazine “Whole Earth Review”.  It is 144 pages densely filled with a wide variety of articles on technology, ecology, and human potential – the promo on the inside front cover starts, “Mayans, Hawaiians, and Tibetans.  Virtual reality, psychedelic alchemy, neuro-tarot.  Youth culture and elder care.  Teaching lumber companies not to trespass.  Radio as anarchic medium.  A grandmother’s advice on childrearing.  Zines.  Independent music producers.  Lucid dreams.”  Lots of interesting thoughts and speculations there.

There were two articles within that issue that stuck with me and that have informed my thought and my creative process ever since.  The magazine draws no particular connection between the two articles – it puts them in separate sections – but both have to do with developing special perceptual skills for purposes of moving through the world.  If I hadn’t encountered these articles in the same place, they might not have made such an impression on me, but their alignment opened a door for me about how we can train and expand our perception of the world, not through drugs or mystical experiences, but through simple practice.

For me, artistic development is about learning to perceive more deeply, to notice beauty that most miss.  Mass commercial culture is all about bombarding people with sensations, pushing their buttons and pulling their strings.  By appreciating subtle things and enjoying all the fantastic phenomena the world gives us for free, we can liberate ourselves from commercial mind control.  But even if you don’t care about all that and just read this blog for the drawing tips, there’s no technique more powerful than learning to see more when you look.

So, back to “Whole Earth Review” – both of the articles I’ll be talking about are available in full online, and you’ll find a list of links at the bottom of this post.

Cover of “Whole Earth Review”, Fall 1991 issue

“Nightwalking: Exploring the Dark with Peripheral Vision” tells of its authors Zink and Parks’ experiments in enhancing peripheral vision.  The human eye contains two types of light sensitive receptor cells.  Cones, densely packed in the center of the visual field, see color and fine detail.  Rods predominate in the outer circle of the visual field.  They see neither color nor fine detail, but are far more sensitive than the cone cells in dark conditions.  The visual cortex uses this peripheral rod vision for orientation and to notice movement happening away from our point of focus.  (See my earlier post, “Exercising Perception”, or my guest post on Daniel Maidman’s blog for more detail on all this.)

Peripheral vision is usually a subconscious process.  Zink and Parks found that they could expand their conscious attention into the peripheral visual field by locking their central vision on the end of a stick attached to a hat and extending about a foot in front of their eyes.  When the focal point is immobilized, awareness is free to move elsewhere.  They practiced hiking in the desert, over very uneven terrain, this way, and found that they were able to move smoothly and sure-footedly, avoiding obstacles and pitfalls without looking at them.

Even before I read this article I had been doing perceptual experiments on my own.  I had often tried walking around the city with my eyes crossed, which is essentially the same thing Zink and Parks were doing, and had discovered the fascinating ability to watch things happening far away from my line of sight, even simultaneous things on opposite sides of me.

New Mexico Desert at Night, photographer unknown

Since the peripheral visual field is dominated by rod cells, noted for their high sensitivity to extremely low levels of light, Zink and Parks decided to try the technique walking in the wilderness in the moonless night.  If you’ve tried walking on a moonless (or new moon or crescent moon) night far from artificial light sources, you know how hard it can be to see where you’re stepping or what’s around you.  Zink and Parks again used the hat with a stick in front, adding a dot of phosphorescent paint to the end of the stick, and again went hiking in the New Mexico wilds.  They found they were able to see all sorts of things one would never see by normal looking in the dark – rabbits and bats moving around them, the faint bioluminescence of decaying wood.  They were able to move swiftly and safely over rocks and ravines.  (I wonder if anyone has tried this in a dense forest at night – that would be much darker than the open desert landscape, even on a moonless night.)

Nightwalking participant, from Australian site NLP Cafe Brisbane. This nightwalker’s hat has a glow-in-the-dark plastic heart instead of a dot of phosphorescent paint as described in Zink’s original article.  Photographer unknown.

In my own practice as an artist, I’ve found the ability to move my awareness into the peripheral visual field is a vital skill.  I can look at a detail with my sharp central field and still maintain a sense of the whole of what I’m looking at because the peripheral vision is taking it all in.  Many observational artists intuitively squint at their subject – this disables the sharp vision, helping you to see the whole pattern.  A deliberate practice of developing peripheral sight can be even more powerful.

Centered on the Feet, 2012, watercolor on paper, by Fred Hatt

The second article that struck me in the Fall 1991 issue of “Whole Earth Review” was “The Soft, Warm, Wet Technology of Native Oceania,” Harriet Witt-Miller’s piece on the traditional navigation techniques of the peoples of the Pacific islands.  Eighteenth-century European explorers were astonished to find that the far-flung islands of the Pacific, widely scattered across thousands of miles of open ocean, had nearly all been settled long ago by people with outrigger canoes who had no sextants or compasses or chronometers.  How did they cross such distances, and find tiny dots of land in the vast expanse of ocean?

Micronesian Proa, still from “The Navigators”, a film by Sam Low

These cultures, now tragically threatened by rising sea levels, had highly sophisticated methods of accurate maritime navigation, all based on direct observation rather than on abstract patterns such as latitude and longitude or the geometrical satellite array of the Global Positioning System.

GPS satellites, original source of illustration unknown

Traditional Pacific navigators or wayfinders learn to observe very subtle things.  They can look at the light reflecting off the bottom of a distant cloud and tell whether it is over green land or over a coral atoll’s crystalline lagoon, thus detecting islands beyond the horizon.  They know the stars and the way their arcs of movement change with the hour and the season.  They observe the behavior of sea birds and the properties of water and floating debris to determine in what direction lies land.  They have a deep understanding of the movement of wind and water currents.  They learn to distinguish the constant patterns of ocean swells from the shifting surface waves by sensing the deeper movements with their scrotums resting on the bottom of their boats.

Currents of the Pacific, warm currents in orange, cold currents in green, original source of map unknown

Currents of the Pacific, warm currents in orange, cold currents in green, original source of map unknown

The Micronesians map their world with “stick charts”, made of palm sticks.  According to the caption of the below illustration from Witt-Miller’s article, credited to “Exploratorium Quarterly”, “Curved sticks showed prevailing wave fronts, shells represented the locations of islands, and threads indicated where islands came into view.”

Micronesian stick map, illustration from “Whole Earth Review”, Fall 1991 issue, page 67

Western ways of knowledge and technology have often been about superimposing an abstract pattern over the real world, and operating according to the abstraction.  For the visual artist, that traditionally means systems of linear perspective, canons of human proportion, color theories, etc.  For the contemporary artist it may also include the abstracting analyses of critical theory and semiotics.

Proportions of Man, 1557, by Albrecht Dürer

I understand and use such abstractions – well, critical theory, not so much – but in my own practice of observational figure drawing I stay much closer to the Pacific wayfinder’s method, looking at subtleties of reflected light, following the swells and hollows of the model’s body as though I am moving across a territory.  I look at the points of inflection, such as nipples or kneecaps, in terms of angular relationships and the flowing patterns that join them, as the sticks connect the shells on a Micronesian sailing chart.  My process is tactile.  I feel my way along.

Hands Reversed, 2012, black watercolor on paper, by Fred Hatt

All of these different kinds of observation are happening simultaneously, or in quick succession.  Part of my mind is aware of the peripheral view.  Part of it is looking at the colors in the shadows or the direction of hairs on the body.  Part of it is mapping the points and following the flows.  Part of it is focused on my paper, my brush, my colors.  It is impossible to coordinate all these factors into a systematic method I could describe or define.  The magic that makes it work is intuition, the power of the mind to integrate a torrent of incoming sensations, conscious and not, into a coherent experience.  Intuition is trained by practice, not by theory.  It must be rigorously exercised, and then it must be trusted.

As I have pursued my artistic discipline, I have been deeply informed by these ideas of navigational perception.  To draw or paint or sculpt from observation is to explore, to discover, to wonder.

Both the short articles cited here are full of details I haven’t mentioned, and well worth reading for themselves:

 “Nightwalking: Exploring the Dark with Peripheral Vision”, by Nelson Zink and Stephen Parks

“The Soft, Warm, Wet Technology of Native Oceania”, by Harriet Witt-Miller

Both articles were originally published in “Whole Earth Review” No. 72, Fall, 1991.

Other relevant links:

Nelson Zink’s website NavaChing

Harriet Witt’s website Passenger Planet

Exploratorium’s website “Never Lost” on Polynesian navigation

Sam Low’s article “A World of Natural Signs”

Illustrations here besides my own drawings were found on the web.  Clicking on a picture will take you to the place where I found it.

2012/02/08

The Body Contemplated

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Energy,Poetry — Tags: , , , , , , , — fred @ 22:17

Ray, 2012, by Fred Hatt

a person is a bit of this and a bit of that

fuzzy tendencies overlapping, interacting

forged and scourged in the kiln of embodied life

 

Earrings, 2012, by Fred Hatt

eyes ions, black magnetic pools

 

A la plage, 2012, by Fred Hatt

zone in on tones

undertone, overtone, midtone

let the parts fall where they may

 

Elbows & Knees, 2012, by Fred Hatt

body takes a beating just doing the day by day

 

Brooder, 2012, by Fred Hatt

why are things so

what do things mean

how do things work

 

Curvature, 2012, by Fred Hatt

a serpent grows limbs

a head aloft partakes of the clouds of heaven

as well as the dirt of the ground

 

Sleep Tight, 2012, by Fred Hatt

a stack of bones

opal tones

 

Halt, 2011, by Fred Hatt

expand, contract

concentrate, dissipate

 

Defeat, 2012, by Fred Hatt

hands ground down while forces face forward

 

Muscles of the Back, 2012, by Fred Hatt

the bones are the slowest river

the flesh, the nerves, the blood grow to flow, each in its way

life is a convulsion of matter

 

Gray, 2012, by Fred Hatt

eyes tomorrow

seated present

 

Outward & Inward, 2012, by Fred Hatt

sentry and slave

guard the grave

 

Defiant, 2012, by Fred Hatt

the body of light harbors a shade

the body of shadow contains a glow

 

Graces, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Luna Triune: wax and full and wane and new

the new of course unseen

every cycle has its way, its period, its mystery

each single season’s unique, any noise has its timbre

all is oscillation, orbs in orbit

go down long, draw in and in, only finally open out

 

Degasian, 2012, by Fred Hatt

bow, bend, lay low

tack and parry, stealthy slow

like grass grows

 

Retrospect, 2011, by Fred Hatt

space is light

matter is force

time is mind

 

Rorrim, 2012, by Fred Hatt

feeling with eyes, rove over ridges and marshes and creeks

body is topography and self is weather

sometimes stormy, often calm

 

Fine Lines, 2012, by Fred Hatt

I am made of moss and ferns

mushrooms and minnows and dim glow worms

 

Faun, 2012, by Fred Hatt

man is land

containing imagination

soil to till

seed to spill

 

Heartache, 2012, by Fred Hatt

bereft chest

abject head

trunk bent

tower leant

 

Brothers, 2012, by Fred Hatt

a man knows a man, nothing said

 

All the images in this post are watercolor on paper, sometimes with a little white gouache.  I painted all these within the last two months.  Sizes:

Graces and Rorrim:  38″ x 50″ (96.5 x 127 cm).

Ray, Earrings, Elbows & Knees, Sleep Tight, Gray, Defiant, Retrospect, Fine Lines, Faun, Heartache, Brothers:  19″ x 24″ (48.3 x 61 cm).

A la plage, Brooder, Curvature, Halt, Defiant, Muscles of the Back, Outward & Inward, Degasian: 14″ x 17″ (35.6 x 43.2 cm).

2012/01/19

Oddities of the Anatomium

Filed under: Collections of Images,Figure Drawing: Anatomy — Tags: , , — fred @ 22:14

"Vegetables Are All Your Body Needs", advertisement for the International Vegetarian Union

Most figurative artists spend some time studying human anatomy – basic musculoskeletal structure, often just enough that your Spider-Man doesn’t come out looking like Popeye.  But of course the study of anatomy is a vast edifice, with wings and annexes, great halls and obscure corridors, constructed by physicians and yogis, gymnasts and psychiatrists, animators and masseurs, mystics and coroners.  Let’s call this imposing monument the Anatomium.

For an artist, the body is more than just a physical structure.  It is an instrument for experiencing and portraying realities beyond the physical plane:  emotions, energy, spirituality.  We need to understand structure, but we also need to go beyond structure.  Your teacher may have urged you to spend most of your time studying in the great hall of bones and the gallery of muscles, but there is much to discover in the more obscure rooms of the Anatomium.  Let’s look at some curious specimens found in many different parts of the labyrinthine palace, from the viewpoint of the artist.  (All of these images were found on the web, and clicking on an image will take you to the page where I found it, and where, usually, more pictures and information will be found.)

The brilliant ad that leads this post tells us that if we are what we eat, we can construct a healthy body from a vegetable diet.  In folk wisdom, it’s often been thought that various plants and other substances support the functioning of the body parts they resemble, so for instance walnuts are supposed to be good for the brain, and tomatoes for the heart.  This way of seeing the anatomy arises from a metaphorical understanding of the body as a garden or landscape, a popular image since the time of Arcimboldo, at least.  Here’s Aurel Schmidt’s beautiful contemporary rendition of body as garden, a teeming but unsettling garden full of insects, snakes, birds, and cigarette butts.

Super Natural, 2006, mixed media on paper by Aurel Schmidt

Since the industrial revolution, the metaphor of the body as a factory or machine has been common in the culture.  A lot of medical practice, especially orthopedics, is essentially based in this mechanical metaphor.  Perhaps the ultimate realization of the industrial view of the body is Woody Allen’s depiction of the internal sexual functions as a military-industrial deployment in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask.

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace), 1926, by Fritz Kahn

The technology of the industrial and digital era has given us countlesss new ways of seeing and studying the human body.  X-rays, MRIs, and endoscopes have become essential tools in medicine.  The National Institutes of Health and the National Medical Library collaborated on the “Visible Human Project”, high-resolution 3D scans of real bodies for anatomical study.  The bodies were sliced in razor-thin layers and scanned, the data assembled into a 3D image that can be viewed in any cross-section or in the round, or even “flown through” in a digital animation.

Coronal cross-section from the Visible Human Project of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health

Controversial physician and showman Dr. Gunther von Hagens invented a technique for preserving human tissue by replacing the water  with plastics, which enabled him to prepare real cadavers for public display in his “Body Worlds” exhibits.  Von Hagens’ figures follow the renaissance convention in anatomical illustrations of posing flayed figures as though alive and active.  These exhibits are educational, fascinating, and more than a little creepy.

The Walker, plastinated from Body Worlds exhibit, from Gunther von Hagens' Institute for Plastination

Therapists, athletes, dancers, and others who study movement, posture, and fitnesss experiment with the living body, which can reveal dynamic aspects of the structure that may be missed when you’re cutting up cadavers.  This illustration from Thomas Myers’ Anatomy Trains, a study of the fascia and connective tissue in bodily movement, looks like a bit of couture in the outré style of an Alexander McQueen.

The Back Functional Line, illustration from "Anatomy Trains", by Thomas W. Myers

The illustration below shows the dermatomes.  Most of the nerves of the body are wired to the spinal cord, and the dermatomes are the areas of the skin divided according to the particular vertebra where each area has its nerve connection to the spinal cord.  The different areas of the spine are color-coded, cervical (neck) nerves in white, thoracic in yellow/black, lumbar in blue/black, and sacral nerves in red/black.  This too looks like a bit of latex fetishwear or a high-tech superhero costume.

Dermatomes (Spinal Innervation Map), artist unknown, from the website of New York School of Regional Anesthesia

Within the field of anatomical studies, there are many ways of dividing the body into regions.  Here’s a diagram for doctors with named regions on the surface of the body, for the purposes of clinical description.

Anatomical Regions of the Body, illustration from David Darling's online "Encyclopedia of Science"

“Surface Anatomy” is an interesting field for the artist who works with live models, as it’s all about learning to identify underlying structures based on what can be seen or felt at the level of the skin.

Surface Anatomy of the Abdomen, from "The Anatomy Lesson", a website by Wesley Norman, PhD, DSc, professor at Georgetown University

Seeing beneath the surface shows that the beautiful reality of the body conceals even more beautiful hidden realities.

Pregnant Anatomy, illustration found on Ed Merritt's Flickr photostream (may not be original source)

These back muscles look like the head of a goat – cool.

The Back,iIllustration by Phrenzy84

The illustration below shows a method of analyzing the structure of the face by geometrical analysis of a series of identifiable points.  This kind of analysis was invented for forensic use, but it’s also the basis of computer face recognition and other forms of digital biometrics.

Illustration from "Geometric Morphometric Analyses of Facial Shape in Twins", a paper by Demayo, et al.

This kind of geometrical analysis of faces and bodies is also important to artists working with digitally generated 3D graphics.  Some of the most interesting anatomy illustrations, from an artist’s point of view, are found in CGI tutorials.

Illustration from Phung Dinh Dzung's "Realistic Human Face Modeling", a guide for 3D computer graphic artists

Here’s a look at the different typical patterns of fat distribution on the male and female body.  It’s a fine illustration, although that male figure looks disconcertingly like me!  These sketches derive from works by Prud’hon and Rubens.

Fat Distribution in Women and Men, illustration from an online anatomy and figure drawing tutorial by Nocte

This one compares the basic skeletal structure of a person with that of a four-legged animal such as a dog.  I think the best way to grasp anatomical realities is to see how the same basic structure manifests with variations in different individuals and even different species.  You can learn a lot about anatomy just petting an animal!

Comparison of Human and Quadruped Skeletons, source unknown

In this illustration, an artist shows how different arrangements of the shoulder girdle express different emotions.

Shoulder Movements of Psychological Description, source unknown

The brain contains its own models of the body.  The sensory cortex and the motor cortex are bands of the human brain devoted to the senses and to movment, respectively.  When the image of the body is projected to correspond with the appropriate parts of the brain, the resulting distorted figure is called a “homunculus” (latin for “little human”).  The homunculus, the body in the brain, has huge lips and hands, since those areas are so important for sensation and action.  Note that the hand area is right next to the eye area – perhaps this facilitates the connections a visual artist makes.  And the genitalia area is right next to the feet – an explanation for foot fetishism?

Somatosensory Homunculus, artist unknown

Many forms of traditional therapy use this kind of mapping of the whole body onto a part of the body.  Auricular acupuncture, for example, is a form of acupuncture in which the ear stands in for the whole body, and practitioners believe that any part of the body can be treated by needling the corresponding parts of the ear.  Reflexology massage of the feet and hands is another treatment that uses similar charts.

Indian Hand Reflexology Illustration, original source unknown

Of course these aren’t anatomical studies in the scientific sense, but the ancient energy arts, including qigong and tantric yoga and many kinds of martial and healing arts, are based on extensive experiential study of energy flow in the body.  Understanding the immaterial but dynamic aspects of the body should interest any artist who strives to capture the feeling of aliveness.  Here’s an unknown artist’s attempt to represent the human aura, the field of energy clairvoyants say they can perceive around the body.

Human Aura, artist unknown

Chinese Traditional Medicine, martial arts and practices of “internal alchemy” aimed at physical or spiritual self-transformation, use a highly developed system of subtle anatomy to understand the movement of many different kinds of energy within and around the body.  For a visual artist, but even more for a performing artist, this way of visualizing and projecting emotions and forces can be a powerful tool.

Psycho-Emotional Aspects of the Liver Channel, from a website on the energy channels of acupuncture theory, by Lieske

Going back to scientific medical imaging, but keeping the emphasis on energy flow, we have thermographic imaging, which shows patterns of heat radiating from the body.   (Check out a brief excerpt from a dance film made with high-resolution thermographic cameras.)

Thermogram of the Breast, original source unknown

For an artist, the most subtle part of the human form, the most difficult thing to capture, is the spark, the life force, the flow of energy.  It’s important to understand structure, but it’s also important to see the dynamism and tension within that structure.  Anatomical studies of all kinds can open our eyes to the amazing tornado of different forces that is the human body.

I’ll conclude this post with a traditional medical anatomical illustration, but one of great beauty.   This is an abstraction, not a visual transcription of reality.  Of course the veins aren’t really blue and the arteries red and the nerves yellow – this is just a convention to aid in a functional understanding of what is going on.  But the life force in all its explosivenesss expresses itself here.

Thoracic Anatomy, 2006, illustration by Patrick J. Lynch

In researching on the web and my own archives for this post, I found such a wealth of incredible anatomical images that I think there will be many posts to come on the general subject of human anatomy.

Nearly all of these images link back, if you click on them, to where I found them on the web.  If any of my readers has further information about the sources or artists behind these images, please let me know.  It is often frustrating to me that so many great images on the web are published without attribution.

2011/10/23

The Full Gamut

Filed under: Collections of Images,Color — Tags: , , , , — fred @ 00:07

Munsell principal and intermediate hues, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

I am a person of serial obsessions.  Every few years I feel compelled to learn everything I can about some topic, usually something esoteric or scientific.  Around 2003-2005, my obsession was color:  the science of light and spectra, the biology and psychology of color perception, the technology of color reproduction, ways of naming colors and dividing color space, and philosophical ideas about color.  When I had the idea of writing a blog post about color, I started looking through my notes and collections of digital images, making a list of interesting things I’d learned.  There was enough there for a book or a semester course!  Perhaps in the future there will be more posts on color.  For now, I’ve selected a few interesting or lovely images from my collection, and here present them with interesting related factoids.  Even if you don’t share my hunger for knowledge about color, I hope you’ll appreciate the beauty of these diagrams.

I’m titling this post “The Full Gamut” – we’ve all heard that phrase meaning the complete range of something that has varieties.  The word gamut originally meant a range of musical notes.  It’s used in color science to indicate the limited range of colors that can be described or reproduced given a certain technological context.  A computer monitor, for example, can simulate many colors by combining various intensities of red, green, and blue “primary” colors.  The surface colors of most naturally occurring objects can be reproduced, but there remain many colors outside the gamut of the monitor.  You can see pure spectral colors by looking at the reflections on a CD or DVD.  The colors in the image at the top of this post approach the limits of saturation achievable on a monitor, but compared to pure spectral colors they’re surprisingly dull.  Even Newton’s prismatic spectrum does not contain the full range of vivid colors – magentas and purples cannot be represented by single wavelengths, but only exist as the blending of the opposite ends of the spectrum.

Color is a three-dimensional phenomenon.  Every model for describing colors requires three variables: three primaries, or three polarities.  For a general understanding of color independent of any particular medium or technology, the clearest dimensions are hue, value (lightness or luminance), and chroma (saturation or intensity).  Albert Munsell’s model of color space is one of the most illuminating systems, based on rigorous study of human color perceptions rather than on physical or technological variables.  In Munsell’s system, value is the vertical dimension, hue is the angular dimension, and chroma is shown as the distance from the center.  The resulting arrangement of colors is called a color solid, or a color tree.

The Munsell colors are produced in rigorously accurate sets as books and charts to be used to describe colors by visual reference to standard samples.  They come very close to representing the full range (gamut) of colors that can exist in the form of physical objects.

Munsell Color Tree, illustration by limaorian@hotmail.com

The “color wheel” most people are taught in basic art classes is a rigid and simplistic model compared to Munsell’s color solid.  The color wheel doesn’t account for the fact that different hues have different ranges of chroma or intensity, and that some hues (e.g. yellow) achieve their highest chroma at high values, while other colors (e.g. bluish purple) are more intense at a darker value.  Munsell’s system defines the hues by letters and numbers, starting with five fundamental hues (red, yellow, green, blue, and purple), and five secondary or intermediate hues (yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple).  The diagram below shows five cross-sections of the Munsell color solid, with the principal hues on the right and the complementary intermediate hues on the left.

Five cross sections of Munsell Color Solid, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

Here are the most saturated colors around the perimeter of the Munsell Solid.  Here, the hue circle is repeated twice along the horizontal axis with the values arranged on the vertical axis.

Munsell hues at maximum chroma, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

If we consider the color solid as a kind of globe, with the neutral grays as the axis, we can look at the irregular shape from a point of view centered above the north (white) pole or the south (black) pole.  The colors with maximum chroma are at the outer bound of these polar views, whether they are on the “equator” (middle value perimeter) or not.  Please note that the gamut of the computer monitor is considerably smaller than the gamut of the physical samples included in the Munsell standard, so the colors closer to the outside edge of the figures below are not really accurate.  You can see that the colors yellow and green achieve high chroma at the higher values, while deep blues and purples are most intense at low values.

Light and dark hemispheres of the Munsell color solid, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

Some of the transitions between adjacent colors in the illustration above may seem abrupt, but that’s because of variations in the maximum achievable value or chroma.  If we look at the full range of hues at a uniform value and chroma level, as in the circle below, the transitions are very smooth.

40 Munsell hues at value 7, chroma 8, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

This circle is at value 7 and chroma 8, the maximum chroma level achievable all the way around the hue circle at any value in the Munsell solid.  We probably all learned in school that Newton proved that light is a waveform, and that different colors are different wavelengths of light.  The diagram below charts the level at which the Munsell samples, at the same chroma and value seen in the above illustration, reflect various wavelengths of the spectrum.  The horizontal axis goes from short wavelengths (violet blue) at the left, to long wavelengths (red) at the right.  You will notice that even these samples, which appear quite vividly colored, are all reflecting almost half the spectrum at over half their average reflectivity.  These colors are not “pure”, but they do look intense!

Spectral reflection curves for five principal Munsell hues at value 7, chroma 8, illustration from article by A. Kimball Romney and Tarow Indow

Munsell’s model arranges colors by measures of equal perceptual distance, but what does that have to do with how we learn to identify and name colors?  One of the most cited academic papers of all time is Berlin and Kay’s cross-cultural survey of color names.  Berlin and Kay used a study of color terms to address the question of linguistic relativity, that is, whether linguistic categories define perceptions, or vice versa.  They used the highest-chroma Munsell samples of colors at the full range of hues and values, asking participants of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds to choose the “best examples” of their basic color words, and the range these words would cover.  The “best examples” were called “focal colors”.  In the diagram below, the focal colors are marked as chosen by speakers of American English.

American English focal colors in a Munsell grid, based on data from Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, 1969, by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

Berlin and Kay found a high degree of uniformity in the specific colors chosen as focal colors between speakers of different languages.  They also found evidence that color terms evolve in a given language in a predictable order.  First, a distinction is made between dark/cool and light/warm.  Red is the first individual color to be given a name.  Next, green or yellow are distinguished, followed by blue.  More complex languages separate brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.  Berlin and Kay’s findings have been challenged and reproduced by many subsequent researchers, using the same Munsell grid.  The chart below shows interesting variations on how the color range can be divided, with eight divisions in English and five in a language called Berinmo.

Distribution of English and Berinmo color names, illustration from the article "Colour categories in a stone-age tribe", by Jules Davidoff, Ian Davies and Debi Roberson, Nature 398, 1999

Below are pretty close representations of the “focal colors” chosen by English speakers.  There are eleven basic color terms in English, the eight easily identifiable ones shown below, plus black, gray, and white.  Chosen samples of focal colors would be very similar for nearly every language in the industrial world.  Why are these colors seen as basic?  They are not evenly distributed on the grid of colors, and no one, as far as I know, has been able to show any fundamental relation between these specific colors and any measurable aspect of color vision or color physics.

Focal colors, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

You’ll notice that people make finer distinctions in the colors around the red/yellow portion of the range.  Human skin color and the colors of most animals are in this area, so perhaps we are more attuned to fine differences there than we are in the blue and green areas associated with the landscape.

Randall Munroe, author of the classic geek webcomic XKCD, conducted an online color-naming experiment, with a random color generator that asks random web participants to name the colors they see.  His report on the results of the survey is hilarious as well as interesting.  Here’s his map of how thousands of participants intuitively divided up the color space.

Dominant color names mapped to RGB cube, illustration from XKCD Color Survey Results, from Randall Munroe's XKCD blog

Color naming experiments are usually done by showing subjects one color at a time.  When the colors are shown together, as in the chart above, or in the Munsell grid illustrating the Berlin and Kay survey, we notice the arbitrariness of the lines we draw to distinguish colors.

Color perception is a relativistic phenomenon.  The book Interaction of Color, by the painter and teacher Josef Albers, shows by example how colors are seen differently according to their surroundings.  In the illustration below, the double-x line looks very different depending on its background, but where the line joins we can see its continutiy.

Illustration from Interaction of Color, 1975, by Josef Albers

As an artist, I find it most useful to look at colors as polarities tending one way or another.  Many real-life colors are very muted and subtle, but if you can look at a shadow and see, for example, that it has a bluer tone compared to the adjacent highlight’s yellower tone, you can begin to capture those subtleties.

In photography, it is common to analyze and correct colors using such polarities.  The most important one is the color temperature axis, what most painters would describe as the warm/cool distinction.  In the study of light, it was observed that the temperature of any incandescent substance, such as a heated piece of metal, could be determined by the color of its glow.  White hot is hotter than red hot, and blue hot is hotter still.  Color temperature is a scientifically defined scale for describing the color of light on a red/orange/white/blue scale.  Typical incandescent lights glow at 2500-3200 degrees kelvin, while daylight is 5000-7500 degrees.  The temperature-color correspondence is exactly the opposite of what is taught to artists as warm and cool colors.

Color temperature illustration, from a webpage by W. A. Steer, PhD

Of course, fluorescent lights, neon lights, high-intensity discharge lamps, LEDs, and other non-incandescent sources aren’t defined by the color-temperature scale, so correcting colors from those lights involves a second scale, which photographers call “tint” or “plus green” and “minus green”.  Minus green is magenta or pink.  A minus green filter, for example, can overcome the tendency of fluorescent lights to photograph as greenish.  These two axes, orange-blue and green-magenta, are used in filtering for lenses or light sources while shooting, and in digital post-processing of photographs and video recordings.

In figurative art, I’m always looking at the variations in flesh tones.  I find it useful to look at these very subtle differences as tendencies along axes of complementary colors:  orange/blue, magenta/green, red/green blue, yellow/deep blue.

Eight part color arrangement, digital illustration by Fred Hatt

Some of the illustrations in this post are my own, and others are found on the web.  Clicking on found images links to the site where I found them. For the Munsell colors used in some of the digital illustrations I am indebted to Wallkill Color for their Munsell Conversion Software.

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