bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - Natural viewing direction...(what)!

Hi Joanie'

Great stuf about holding a mirror infront off the artwork! I wil actualy use this the next time its comes up at one of my workshops! i do agree with you that i to have a tendency to work more comfetable from left to right, eather in my drawings or my bonsai work. Although i always had a feeling that with drawing it had to do with your hand hanging in your own work (if you work from right to left), i never gave it a second thought do. It was later on in life when i got involved with bonsai that i notisted the same expirience!
It was like...wauw, you are sudenly confronted with something you are dowing your whole life with out thinking about it! Although it is not of great importence, it is fun to realise that the way (left or right) the material is flowing extualy desides the way we would shape it, the trees probebly would look totely diferant at the end!
Thanks for your toughts,
Hans van Meer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joanie

Hans, I personally agree with you. When I look at the first photo, I notice the empty space to the left of the trunk first, then the apex or crown of the tree, and finally the smaller trunk on the right. When I look at the mirror image, I see the smaller trunk first and then the crown, and the empty space isn't as empty somehow. I definitely "like" or feel more comfortable with the tree in the second image.

It works better if you cover one picture while viewing the other. Or, if the pictures were in seperate posts. Otherwise our brains are too quick for us, and we are done with seeing before we can break down how we saw it.

I have a lot of artist friends who sculpt, and they tend to make their sculptures run either left to right or right to left, each artist having a preferred flow. If you mirror their sculptures they look very different. Actually, a mirror held in front of artwork is a good way for an artist to check what is wrong for the very same reason. It's a common trick we use to make sure that proportion is correct.

It may relate to the direction we write, or the direction we write may be because of this preference in the first place. Our brains are wired as a mirror image of what our eyes see, and studies have shown that half of our brain processes information in a certain way and the other half in a different way. (Right brain- left brain; is it verbal;spatial?) It may be deeper in our consciousness than we expect!

Thank you for the thought provoking post.

Joanie