Meet the Amazing Human Pantograph - It's YOU!

Yesterday's journal on blind contour drawing practice opened the flood gates.  I became fascinated with the task of training smooth pursuit eye movement and have been inundated with ideas on how to do it.  I set about testing ideas immediately.  Rather than overload the journal, I'm putting the info here.

The most recent development is an ambidextrous variation of Kimon Nicholaides schedule 1 blind contour drawing exercise that will turn anyone who practices it into a human pantograph! 

"Pantograph animation" by AlphaZeta - Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Note that the exercise isn't intended as a drawing method like those I investigated some time ago when training ambidextrously. Despite its potential for that, it's not meant to produce a good drawing, but rather to train the eyes to move smoothly and to coordinate that movement with the movement of the hands.  It is a way to bring together as a functional unit visual, kinesthetic and proprioceptive sensitivity.  So, since it doesn't aim at having you draw in any way familiar to you, deciding the drawing hand is inconsequential.  The exercise requires using both hands to do exactly the same tasks at the same time!  Hehe. The only differences are 1) while one hand holds a stylus, the other holds a pen, and 2) during the performance you must watch the hand that holds the stylus, not the other.   

Preparation:
*  Pin down a piece of paper to the drawing board so that it won't move when you draw.  This is important, since working with both hands precludes holding down the paper with a free hand. 
*  Place an image (i.e. of a figure) next to the paper.  This will be the image you copy. You can pin this down, too. The image and the paper don't have to be equal size. 
*  Take hold of a stylus in one hand and a ballpoint pen in the other.  It doesn't matter which hand holds what, except that if the image is on the left side as you face it, you will have to hold the stylus with your left hand.  If it's on the right, you'll have to hold it with your right.

Procedure:
1) With your eyes pick a point on the contour of the figure at which to start. For this, imagine a bead, or other tangible object marking the point.
2) Place the stylus exactly at that point. 
3) Place the pencil point anywhere on the paper.

4) Slowly and deliberately drive your point of vision along the contour. (If it helps, imagine a solid bead moving along the contour). 
5) Use the stylus to follow the movement (i.e. of the bead).  
6) At the same time, move the pencil on the separate page inscribing a line of identical character to that made by the stylus.  (Move the hands simultaneously, make lines with each that look identical to each other.)

Notes:

In my practice I found that the drawing differed in scale from the model.  Being somewhat larger or smaller, instead of exactly the same size, it yet showed excellent internal consistency with regard to proportion.  That is, a part of the model that was x2 bigger than another part was represented as x2 times bigger in the drawing, despite a difference in scale between the model and the drawing.

I think using the stylus provides both a way to control the eye speed as well as providing additional feedback for drawing the model.  The brain is getting visual cues from the eye as well as kinesthetic/proprioceptive cues from both hands.  Any difference in proprioception between hands can be used to bring the movement of the "invisible" hand in line with the observable hand.  This would tend to correct errors in the drawing since the observable hand is working in perfect unison with the visual system.  Such a correction would be done via feeling without having to look at the drawing. 

Spent hours today videotaping exercises for Youtube, but every session disconnected.  In any event, this variation on Kimon Nicholaides blind contour drawing exercises hooked me.  It's simpler than it sounds and the results renew one's sense of wonder about drawing and the workings of the brain and body.