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Approach
DrawToSee has been initiated by artist and teacher, David Noble. It is a site aimed not just at artists who are professionals, aspiring professionals and non professionals alike, but also anyone who has an aptitude for looking. David has been involved with art education for more than forty years and is reappraising the value of representational drawing. As this is a form of drawing which can be taught, David has been offering drawing courses for the last ten years.
David believes that, under certain conditions, accurate representational drawing has a special value. This has been underestimated for much of the last century when it has suffered from a tired reputation and a degree of neglect.
To benefit from the activity of representational drawing the drawer needs to take a drawn image to its ultimate conclusion. This is the state in which nothing more can be added to enhance the drawing’s representational appearance.
Representational drawing reveals its value when it is given time. Time is the most important precondition in the drawing and seeing process. In our busy lives, time is both expensive and limited. So if we are to give our time to representational drawing we need to be confident that we’ll get value from it.
The value of representational drawing becomes evident in the following ways:
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It is visual discovery. It increasingly heightens our visual awareness where we notice more of the visual subtleties of our surroundings.
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It can trigger creative thought processes and invention by highlighting our visual preferences.
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It can act as a potential antidote to creative anxiety and block.
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It allows us to experience the thrill of achieving tonal resonance and illusion.
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It engages us in a totally absorbing mental dialogue with the subject, an involvement which can offer a therapeutic release from stress.
DrawToSee advocates an approach to representational drawing which is intentionally non-selective, meaning that every element of a view receives equal attention. This approach liberates drawing activity from any self conscious expression, from any anxiety associated with the quest for originality, from any conceptual content, from any inevitable breaks in continuity or from any influences which may cause representational drawing to identify itself as an art form. Once freed from these concerns and expectations, the skills needed for analytical representational drawing are available to anyone.