Drawing with binoculars
and vague feelings related to lenses
Hello to readers in April! Today I noticed tiny leaves on the ironwood shrubs on the mountain, and a few green tulip curls poking up through the mulch. Snow is still sprinkling in the high mountains, but the soil is starting to warm up. My choice of art supplies is also thawing —- I’ve been painting more often now instead of using the solid drawing mediums of the winter months.
Lately I’ve been trying to describe to myself the feeling I have when I rest my eyes after looking through the magnifying glass repeatedly while drawing/painting tiny lichens. When I’m in the kitchen, (that’s where I make art) I have a habit of looking up from my artwork to a specific spot on the mountain, checking for mountain goats on a knobby bluff.
At first I figured the feeling was just a recalibration of my eyes and mind: having just stared at very small lichens, I was now viewing very large, far off things — fir trees clinging to rock faces.
I read a little about how lenses work (I hope I have the gist of this correct): lenses change the angle of the light entering the eye, “tricking” the brain into thinking an object is larger, or in the case of telescopes, closer. Prisms inside some instruments will invert the image so that it doesn’t land upside-down in the eye.
There’s also my own organic lenses within my eyeballs, filtering and inverting, preparing the light for the rest of my brain. Are these lenses tricking my brain as well? What’s the truth behind the trick?
With these thoughts of lenses and tricks in mind, my description of the feeling I get when recalibrating between lens views, near and far, goes something like this: I have a vivid, embodied sensation (hunch?) that physical size and physical presence are something much different than what my eyes are telling me. I’m not sure what to do with this feeling right now, other than to see if I can more clearly articulate it as I continue to paint and draw things.
Sidenote: I also think it might be interesting to draw things as viewed through binoculars or a telescope, instead of only a magnifying glass. I love the haziness of far off objects, and how slight movements cause the image to shudder — a much different set of interrelationships of body, eye, lens, and object as compared to the magnifying glass situation. I will keep you updated!
Pertinent Links
David Hockney’s investigation of lenses and painting:
Amy Bennett’s paintings and models (I think I’ve posted about her before, but her way of working is…pertinent!)
This beautiful interview with Zen practitioner Henry Shukman:
This painting by Kirsten Sims:
Thank you for reading Studio Notebook (celebrating a whole year of writing today!) and see you in mid April!