The mannequin of the pilot at the HAL Aerospace museum has always felt a bit tragic to me. He is strapped to an ejection seat. Staring straight ahead, his arms hung limp by his side. Every time I see him, I stop to draw him. To commune it feels like. To tell him that I see him, and that a memory of him endures within my memoria in charta.

We had a jam there a couple of weeks ago. This time, as I drew his helmet, I became aware of a little handle just above his head. It wasn’t just decorative detail, so I looked it up. It is called a “face curtain.” Pulling it does two things—well, three, actually. It fires the ejection seat, clears the fighter jet’s canopy, and draws out a canvas panel that drapes over the pilot’s face, briefly shielding it from the blast of wind that I imagine roars into the cockpit once the canopy has peeled away. The handle attached to the seat between his legs is the secondary ejection mechanism.

I know nothing about aircraft or ejection mechanisms The only reason I even noticed those little details was because I was drawing them. In this sense, drawing is a way of seeing.

Drawing is seeing, ok, but in what way? We could contrast seeing to looking to get a sense of the difference. Looking is more involved than seeing. To look at something means to direct your attention at it, while seeing is a basically…biological? It just occurs. Independent of ‘me’.

When I look at something, I narrow my cone of attention. I’m being specific. I’m labelling. I’m completing an objective. It’s a top-down way of processing.

Seeing, on the other hand, is a bottom-up process. It is a reaction to stimuli. What was that flash of yellow-orange and black in the sea of green stalk? Before I can even form a thought, my brain has already decided it is a tiger. It is safer to assume it is a tiger, it thinks, and not a newspaper with a full page Zomato ad, because Zomato ads won’t eat your face.

So drawing, like any other maker type activity requires aspects of that involve both top-down processing–How do I best depict that texture? Should the value for this little detail be rendered as a mid-tone?–and also, bottom-up processing–The gestalt of the scene. The gesture of the movement.

Here are some pictures, with notes that try to explain what is going on in my head while i’m drawing.

Finely wrought detail - Tipu’s Summer Palace

I drew these at Tipu’s summer palace in Bengaluru. As we were entering the gates, a couple were leaving. I heard one of them say “There’s nothing to see in there.” Indeed, the palace is an empty building, but the tourist was missing the point because the building is the exhibit!

Tipu’s summer palace was started by Hyder Ali, and completed by his son Tipu in 1791. It is lined with teak, its walls are painted with beautiful floral motifs, and as palaces go, it is a cozy thing.

I walked around the inside of this little palace, trying to visualise what it may have looked like during the reign of the sultan. The pillars caught my attention. They are all over the place. As I drew the pillar, I became aware of the motifs at the base. I drew that, and suddenly all I could see were the motifs. The carving on the staves of the pillar, the flowers painted on the walls. On the borders of alcoves for the lamps. Everywhere. It was a bit of a treasure hunt. I was actively looking for interesting symbols to document.

I also annotate my sketches. These notes are on what I’ve learned about the subject. I tend to look up Wikipedia, or do web searches in between spurts of drawing. The drawing prompts the searches and the information from search results informs the drawing.

Visual density - Dhobi Ghat, K.R Market, Flower Market

These three drawings, from the Dhobi Ghat in Ulsoor, the K.R market and the flower market in Malleshwaram, depict a different approach to drawing. At Tipu’s palace, I was drawn into the detail. In these places, I wanted to interpret the gestalt of the space. The visual stimuli (and auditory and olfactory) the noise and chaos was overloading my senses, and I wanted to capture that in my journal.

Rather than try to draw individual details, I tried to respond to the overwhelming visual density by trying to draw all of it, all at once. I jumped around the page, packing in details, interpreting the chaos with rapid strokes. I used a brushpen for all three drawings.

The fine, hard line of a gel pen slows me down, makes me observe. Become deliberate. The fine line of a pen is good for deliberate detailing. For top-down thinking. The mad rush of the market on the other hand demanded a brush.

A brush is malleable. I can switch between fine lines, broad strokes, dry brush effects… and as a consequence, my drawings become loose, my eye (hand) does not rest at any one point, which lets me move faster than if I drew with a pen.

In essence, I can respond faster to visual stimuli because a brush makes a variety of marks, of varying thicknesses, while the pen is restricted to the thickness of its nib. I can twirl the brush, for instance, to create a mark that looks remarkably like the twisted clothes on a dhobi’s washing stone, or a mound of flowers in the florist’s basket.

Folk Dancers - Movement and Energy

I drew these folk dancers at the Chitrakala Parishath during a jaathre. Traditional folk dancers make for interesting subjects. The fabulous costumes, the colour, the exuberant energy. Drawing people, especially artists is different from the previous two scenarios–the palace and the markets. What matters when drawing people is gesture.

Gesture drawing is a way to try and capture movement and body language. I used a brushpen because it adds personality to the drawings, and also the economy of marks I get from it is perfect for drawing moving people.

The other thing about drawing is the learning from conversations. Every dancer I drew was curious enough to come over and strike up a conversation. Perhaps it is more flattering to be drawn than photographed? This allows for friendly interrogation. I ask about the dance form, their costumes, where they are from. These stories go into the sketch journal.

The two drawings–the Pooje Kunitha and the Huli Vesha–are examples of what I focus on when drawing people. The Pooje Kunitha artist is balancing a heavy kalasha with an elaborate bamboo grid festooned with flowers and ornaments. I tried to get the slight tilt and sway of his body right. With the Huli Vesha artists I tried to capture their swagger, as they walked around the CKP campus like tigers–their namesake.

Interpreting movement is a bottom-up process (I think). I don’t watch for specific body-language. I try to take in the overall sense of form and movement rather than try and assemble body parts into a complete figure. I look for shapes and try and watch how they change as the person moves.

So, drawing is never as straightforward as setting lines on paper. There is this dynamic between me, the art material I use and the subject. Each element in this triangle feeds off the other.

What happens inside me is more interesting. Research seems to suggest that when I am drawing, I suppress automatic responses, which helps me focus more on the subject.

Regular behaviour would be to label the things we see. That is a pilot, that is a helmet, those are his arms and so on. The problem with labeling things is that I am no longer seeing that thing. I’m seeing what I think ought to be there.

However when I draw, I am not aware of things like top-down or bottom-up processing. I’m not aware of contents of my mind, or the problem solving that occurs. I’m really not aware of myself at all. This disappearance of the self happens in bursts, sometimes for a few seconds and sometimes for upto five or ten minutes, and when I emerge, I see a drawing on my page. This doesn’t happen always, but when it does, it feels satisfying satiating.

I wonder if this is what butcher Ting¹ meant when he says “…now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. "

Notes