为什么有些人特别会画画呢？ [美国媒体]

Why Are Some People Better at Drawing than Others?

为什么有些人特别会画画？



"Study of Arms and Hands" by Leonardo da Vinci, 1474.

“手臂习作”李奥纳多 达 芬奇绘，1474。

Since the dawn of human art-making, the divide has been clear: There are people who can effortlessly sketch an object's likeness, and people who struggle for hours just to get the angles and proportions right (by which point the picture is scarred by eraser marks, anyway). What separates the drawers from the drawer-nots?

自从人类开始进行绘画这种艺术创作，就出现了明显的分歧：有人轻轻松松就能让事物跃然纸上，有人辛辛苦苦半天连角度和局部都画不好（而且纸上还布满了橡皮擦的痕迹）。那么，善于绘画的人和画不好的人之间到底有什么差别？

Ongoing research is revealing the answer to this longstanding question. It seems that realistic drawing ability hinges on three factors: how a person perceives reality, how well he or she remembers visual information from one moment to the next, and which elements of an object he or she selects to actually draw.

这个长久以来困扰着人们的谜题，正在被一项尚在进行的研究解答。写实绘画的能力与三个因素有关：观察能力，记忆视觉信息的能力，以及选择作画的能力。

If you're stuck on stick figures, the good news, according to researchers at the University College London, is that people can improve at all these mental processes with practice.

如果你着迷于简笔画，这里有一个好消息：根据伦敦大学学院的研究，这些能力都可以通过练习来取得进步。

First, people who can't draw well aren't seeing the world as it really is. When we look at an object, our visual systems automatically misjudge such attributes as size, shape and color; research over the past three years shows at least some of these misperceptions translate into drawing errors. Paradoxically, in other circumstances the misperceptions help us make sense of the world. For example, objects appear larger when they are closer than when they are far away. Even so, the visual system practices "size constancy" by perceiving the object as being approximately one size no matter how far away it is. The visual system, "knowing" a distant object is really bigger than it appears, sends false information to the brain about what the eyeball is seeing.

首先，不善于绘画的人看不到世界真实的样子。当我们观察一个物体时，视觉系统会自动误判一些属性如尺寸、形状和颜色；过去三年的研究显示，这些知觉错误中，相当一部分会导致绘画问题。而矛盾的是，在另外一些情况下，这些知觉错误可以帮助我们认识这个世界，例如物体的近大远小现象。我们的视觉系统会自动进行“尺寸不变”的判定，不管它离得远还是近，都判定它是同一个尺寸。视觉系统“知道”远处物体的实际尺寸要大于它在视野中显现的样子，于是就把虚假的信息发送给了大脑，而不是眼球实际看到的。

People who have the most trouble judging apparent size, shape, color and brightness may also be the worst at drawing, recent research by Justin Ostrofsky and his colleagues at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York suggests. Those who draw well are better able to override these visual misperceptions and perceive what their own eyeballs are really seeing. 

在判断尺寸、形状、颜色、明暗方面有很大问题的人通常在绘画时也会有糟糕的表现——布鲁克林学院的Justin Ostrofsky及其同事与纽约城市大学研究生中心的最新研究如此显示。而那些善于绘画的人通产可以超越视觉系统的知觉错误，进而察觉到眼球真正看到的景象。

However, inaccurately perceiving the image is only part of the story, said Rebecca Chamberlain, a psychologist at University College London. Chamberlain and her colleagues recently conducted experiments investigating the role of visual memory in the drawing process. They believe that drawing skill results in part from an ability to remember simple relationships in an object, such as an angle between two lines, from the moment the angle is perceived to the moment it is drawn. Additionally, "drawing seems to involve focusing on both holistic proportional relationships as well as focus on detail isolated from the whole. Perhaps it is the ability to switch between these two modes of seeing that underpins successful drawing," Chamberlain told Life's Little Mysteries.

不过，对图像不正确的觉察只是问题的一小部分而已。伦敦大学学院的心理学家Rebecca Chamberlain和她的同事最近进行了视觉记忆在绘画中起到什么作用的研究。她们相信记忆能力会对绘画能力产生影响，这种记忆能力包括能否记住物体内部的简单关系，例如两条线之间成多大角度，并且记忆能从观察到的那一时刻持续到画到纸上的那一时刻。更进一步，“绘画需要同时关注整体关系和独立的细节。绘画的基础或许就是画者要具有这种既能观察到整体又能察觉到细节的能力，”Chamberlain告诉《生命的小秘密》说。

Furthermore, as detailed in December in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Ostrofsky and his colleagues found significant evidence that skilled artists are better at selecting which elements of an object need to be included to convey the object's form. And once the artists have selected an important element, they are better at focusing their attention on it and ignoring extraneous details nearby.

此外，正如Ostrofsky及其同事在12月份的《美学，创造与艺术心理学》杂志上所详细谈到的那样，他们已经找到了重要的证据，来证明娴熟的艺术家更擅长于选取事物的部分元素以更好地表现出事物的特征。而一旦选好了要表现的那个重要元素，艺术家就能只关注这个元素而对旁边其他的细节视而不见。

The devil is in the details, and the researchers are still working out the interplay between all the factors that affect drawing accuracy. However, they can all be learned. "There is no doubt that practice is an important component of being able to draw," Chamberlain said. While some may be predisposed to be better at perceptual accuracy and visual memory than others, "the rest of us use tricks to emulate this." 

魔鬼都藏在细节里，而研究者们还在为揭示影像绘画精确性的几个因素之间的相互关系而努力。不过，这些因素都可以学习到。“毫无疑问，练习是锻炼绘画能力的重要手段，”Chamberlain说。虽然确实有些人生来就有更强的正确察觉能力和视觉记忆能力，“但是我们可以用后天习得的技巧来努力追赶上他们。”

In research presented at a recent symposium at Columbia University and soon to be published by Columbia University Press, Chamberlain and her colleagues found practicing drawing significantly improved people's abilities over time, as rated by other people who participated in the study.

在最近于哥伦比亚大学举办的研讨会上，Chamberlain和她的同事发表了研究成果，并且随后就登载在了《哥大新闻》上。她们发现参与项目研究的人中，只要长时间坚持进行练习，就能够显着提高绘画能力。

Based on their research, the psychologists recommended the following techniques for getting better at drawing: Focus on scaling a drawing to fit the size of the paper; anchor an object in its surroundings by showing how it sits in space; focus on the distance between elements of the object and on their relative sizes; and focus on the size and shape of "negative space," or the empty space between parts of the object. Lastly, they recommend thinking of "lines" as what they really are — boundaries between light and dark areas.

在研究基础之上，心理学家们推荐下列技巧来提高绘画能力：绘画时注意画作的尺寸要与画纸相匹配；通过表现物体所处的空间位置来决定把它画在哪里；注意物体各部分之间的距离以及它们之间的尺寸关系；注意物体各部分之间的“负空间”，或者各部分之间空白区域的尺寸以及形状。最后，心理学家们建议多思考“线条”究竟是什么——它是光与影分界。

As Chris McManus, a member of the research team, noted, "There are few human skills which don't improve with practice."

正如科研小组成员Chris McManus所说，“很少有哪些能力是不随着练习而提高的。”