One of the concepts that we’ve learned about that relates to a lot of my experiences is the concept of geons. Geons are part of a theory about how we recognize objects. The Recognition by Components theory, developed by Biederman in 1987, incorporates the structural description theory and says that there are 36 three dimensional shapes that all objects are made up of. These shapes are called geometrical icons or geons (or primitives). These geons and the idea that all objects are made up of them is very similar to the basic process of learning how to draw. I started drawing when I was really young. Like most kids I started doodling as soon as I was big enough to hold a crayon. But the hobby stuck with me and developed over the years. I was self-taught for almost my entire life and only took an actual art class when I entered high school. It was difficult at first to kind of unlearn the ways I was used to drawing and relearn some of the basics of sketching. Some aspects didn’t help improve my art at all so I didn’t use them as much. But the one important skill I learned that I’ve taken with me throughout the rest of my life was doing your initial sketching by using what are, essentially, geons. Visually, everything, including human figures, is composed of basic 2 and 3 dimensional shapes like squares, cirlces, triangles, and cylinders. Once you can visualize how this works, it makes drawing much easier. Take a human figure: the head is a circle, the shoulders and all the joints are circles, the arms and legs are rectangles or cylinders, the torso is an upside down triangle, the pelvic bone is an upright triangle, the feet and hands are ovals with thin rectangles protruding from them. Although a theory about how we recognize objects is obviously different than a skill used for drawing, the similarities made it easier for me to understand Recognition by Components theory because in a way, I’d been practicing a rudimentary version of it for years.
Drawing Geons
Leave a reply
