The 'Fess' Point

One of the hardest things to grasp when undertaking the drawing of a complex situation was the use of ‘fess’ points. These were used as measurement points but ones that constantly readjusted themselves as the surrounding percepts came in and out of focus. I’ll try and explain. The traditional use of measurement as taught and used by such as William Coldstream and later Euan Uglow was to develop a drawn grid or framework of marks based on taking measurements of relationships such as the end of a knee coming directly underneath the chin, or the elbow being at right angles to the corner of a chair.  Gradually more and more measurements are taken, each additional measurement acting as a check and balance for the older measurements, the process gradually moving towards an idea of accuracy. You can never actually reach total accuracy, but it is presumed that the longer you struggle the better the drawing will approximate reality. Tiny points or dots are used to indicate the measuring point and lines radiating off at right-angles and subdivisions of angles from these points gradually reveal a map like set of points that will eventually make up a drawing of a coherent object located in space. The search is on for a better ‘fix’. The more checks you have put into the drawing the better and more accurate it will be. The ‘invisible grid’ is obtained by the use of your hand holding a 'straight', pencil or ruler as an angle measuring tool and your thumb being used to count off distances and equivalents, such as one head height (chin to forehead), being a distance that can go exactly 7 times into perhaps the distance from the corner of the door to the chin. Angles between things are checked over and over again and distances checked for accuracy, the more of course this type of drawing was done the better students got at using their thumb as a measure and the better they were at keeping steady and holding their arms straight and assessing whether or not a pencil was at right angles. The main trajectory of the drawing was towards the production of a grid. If the grid was very accurate it may even be a curved one, related to the type of curve produced when drawing a straight line. (See earlier posts)

However the eyes don’t work quite like this. As you scan across a situation attention moves in and out of focus, the eyes collecting information about the forwards and backwards nature of the eye’s grasp of complex spaces; because they are operating in tandem, one eye is always seeing a slightly different view to the other, the changes between views being used by the brain to calculate distance. It is this constant refocusing that the fess point attempts to reflect.

So that students did not get locked onto a particular point, we would sometimes walk into the situation to be drawn and ‘pinch’ a point in the air, a point that we would refer to as being a significant position within the space. This point could then be identified as a starting point within a drawing that would initially be an exploration of faint radiating searching lines (girons) looking for other measuring points (usually associated with edges of objects or relationships between things). However as these other points were established, each set of marks, for instance those identifying the back of a chair, would start to imply an area of spatial interest, which would result in a ‘pulling’ of the space like some form of invisible gravity attractor and therefore shifting the fess-point which could be re-established as the drawing evolved. New girons could then be sent out on a second voyage of discovery and so on. This was a way of acknowledging Cezanne’s ‘petit sensations’ small aggregations of seen moments, coming together to record a compacted series of perceptions, in such a way that instead of having a record of a gradual move towards a ‘rightness’ we have the capture of the oscillating ghost of spatial discovery.  All the decisions are of course left, some may be slightly emphasised to indicate awareness of the push and pull of gravity, and instead of moving gradually towards a ‘rightness’ the drawing heads towards a re-creation of the flicker of life.

This can only be taught if students have been initially taught to measure the invisible grid of seeing accurately, as in Coldstream or Uglow influenced situations or in the case of Leeds students from that time, drawing a straight line. If not the rigor needed to see the slight movements induced by attention change will not be there. In the same way that you need to start with a musician of a certain level of ability before introducing an awareness of certain types of tonal changes, of not they wont be able to ‘hear’ them. In the case of this sort of drawing, students without a solid experience of objective drawing, literally cant ‘see’ what you are getting at.

Of course what you develop is a heightened awareness of the act of seeing; an awareness that starts to include psychological factors of attention and interest, as well as the simply mechanical observations of scan and record. As an experience it helps with many things, not least in the design of physical objects and spaces, because you have a much more heightened awareness of how working with reality is perceived and how a body will react to changes in perception as it interacts with the world.

See also post of: Wednesday, 26 September 2012 where I have another attempt to get to grips with what these terms meant.