Cones and Seeing vs Feeling

From Harold Speed's The Practice and Science of Drawing:

"If you are asked to think of an object, say a cone, it will not, I think, be the visual aspect that will occur to most people. They will think of a circular base from which a continuous side slopes up to a point situated above its centre, as one would feel it. The fact that in almost every visual aspect the base line is that of an ellipse, not a circle, comes as a surprise to people unaccustomed to drawing.

The fact that we have two flat pictures on our two retinas to help us, and that we can focus at different planes, would not suffice to account for our knowledge of the solidity and shape of the objective world, were these senses not associated with another sense all important in ideas of form, the sense of touch."

Trees

 From Karl Gnass's Landscape sketch and composition class at Malibu Creek State Park.  Trying to create simple volumes.

Models: testing our imagination

Models: testing our imagination 

"There is a less familiar way in which a scientist can work out what is real when our five senses cannot detect it directly.  This is through the use of a 'model' of what might be going on, which can then be tested. We imagine - you might say we guess- what might be there.  That is called the model. We then work out (often by doing a mathematical calculation) what we ought to see, or hear, ect. (often by doing a mathematical calculation) if the model were true. We then check whether that is what we actually do see.  The model might literally be replica made out of wood or plastic, or it might be a piece of mathematics on paper, or it might be a simulation in a computer.  We look carefully at the model and predict what we ought to see(hear, ect.) with our senses (with the aid of instruments, perhaps) if the model were correct.  Then we look to see whether the predictions are right or wrong.  If they are right, this increases our confidence that the model really does represent 'reality' we then go on to devise further experiments , perhaps refining the model, to test the findings further and confirm them.  If our predictions are wrong, we reject the model, or modify and try again." 

Excerpt from - The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
 by Richard Dawkins, beautifully illustrated by David McKean

Drawings from Class - Carol

Drawings of Carol from Karl Gnass's class

Notes to Self

I am trying to get myself to think about these things more.