How is something that is perceived by the eye transformed into movement of the hand which results in a wonderful drawing? To investigate this question, the Leverhulme Trust has awarded the University of the Arts London a 2-year research grant for “Drawing & Cognition” directed by Dr. John Tchalenko, SCIRIA Research Unit, Camberwell College of Arts and Professor R C Miall, Behavioural Brain Sciences, University of Birmingham. The project builds on a successful collaboration between the two groups, the former with skills in drawing and eye tracking and the latter with skills in the human control of movement, a collaboration which has already produced a number of high impact publications in perception and brain imaging.

The Drawing & Cognition project seeks to increase our understanding of how visual perception of the external world is transformed into a picture through the act of drawing – drawing being considered here both as cognitive behavioural activity and artistic endeavour. Whether for the novice or the expert artist, the task of drawing from life consists in acquiring visual information from the external world, processing this information in the brain and executing it manually as marks on paper or canvas. Up to the last decade of the 20th Century, the study of this eye-brain-hand process was mainly the domain of art critics and historians, but today’s biomedical tools, in particular the eye tracker and fMRI brain scanner, have opened the subject to cognitive neuroscience investigation.

Tchalenko writes: "Our approach is based on a balance between real-world drawing as practised by artists and controlled laboratory experiments as undertaken by experimental psychologists. Our research has evolved through a series of stages since a first study of a portrait painter at work (1991), a quantitative study of a painter’s eye and hand movements (2001, 2003), a laboratory study of strategies adopted by artists and novices (2007), neuroimaging investigations of tracing and drawing (2007), combined eye tracker and fMRI investigations defining memory in drawing (2008), comparison of experts and novices copying (2009) and application to the study of Matisse drawing (2009).

We will now be testing groups of experts and novices drawing from life. This will be done with the eye tracker which records the exact gaze positions of eye and hand 50 times per second. The output here is a video image superposing gaze position on the drawing action in progress, as well as a data record from which we can calculate eye-hand movement statistics and strategies. Separate tests will use the functional magnetic resonance imager (fMRI) which can record brain activity during simple drawing tasks mimicking the eye tracking tests. The precise location of this brain activity, together with knowledge of the brain’s neurophysiology, supplies information on the brain processes taking place during drawing. Eye tracker and fMRI data will be combined to gain insight into the cognitive drawing process for the benefit of both the neuroscience and art communities.

CAPTIONS FOR FIGURES
Figure 1 – Eye tracking Humphrey Ocean painting Portrait of Ruby, How Do You Look exhibition 2004.
Figure 2 – Eye movements during the drawing of line ABCD. Humphrey Ocean 1998, Portrait of Nick.
Figure 3 – fMRI brain images: conjunction between encoding faces and drawing. Miall, Gowen & Tchalenko, 2009.