How Do I Know What I See Until I Hear What I Say?

Abstract

Whereas we acknowledge that drawing as process and product within the visual arts is complex and wide ranging, this study concentrates on testing the effectiveness of different pedagogical strategies for enhancing accuracy as a learning objective in drawing from observation. Based on our collective experience teaching observational drawing, we hypothesised that describing a scene verbally in advance of drawing it would encourage a more sophisticated appraisal of the scene and result in a more accurate representation. To test this hypothesis, drawings were made under three conditions: beginning to draw immediately, waiting before drawing, and describing the scene verbally before drawing. The drawings were then rated for accuracy by expert and non-expert raters. Interestingly, the 'wait' condition had the greatest average benefit to drawing accuracy; however, the comprehensiveness of the description in the 'describe' condition also had a positive effect on drawing accuracy. As the number of words used in the description increased, the drawing accuracy increased such that the better descriptions result in drawings superior to the average in the 'wait' condition. This finding recommends that when drawing accuracy is important one should generate as rich a description as possible before beginning to draw.

The application of an all-media perspective-oriented teaching in the environmental art and design program

“…It was hypothesized by the experiments that a verbal description of the scene before drawing would lead to a more complex assessment of the scene. Validation indicated that the accuracy of the drawing increased as the number of words used in the description increased [12]. Scholars have transformed traditional teaching modules into student-centered learning environments using a participatory design experience approach.…”