Developing Visual Studies: Eye Impairment // Ian Sklarsky

Since I’m exploring malfunction, instead of continuing to draw visual studies, I decided to link my process with my theme as well as the object.
Furthermore, since I had decided to develop my skeletal studies by adding organs, I started with the eyes.

I created a mindmap which listed different disorders related to the eye:

• Cataracts
• AMD
• Glaucoma
• Colour blindness
• Glasses (long sight and short sight)
• Lazy eye
• Excess tears

There are many more but I picked a variety that had different causes.

I then went into further detail by adding the symptoms of these problems:

• Clouded vision
• Fading and yellowing of colours
• Distortion
• Eye pain
• Halos of light
• Blurred vision
• Difficult distinguishing colours

There were also many more but I couldn’t include them all. However, from my research, I concluded that blindness was involved in some way shape or form, whether that was from colour, partial, distortion/blurriness, all full on blindness. From this, I decided to create a study where I impaired myself to be blind and drew some eyes.

The first study I created was on an A1 scale, where I had my eyes closed and had to remember the image. The resulting image was odd but you could still tell it was a pair of eyes, even though the blood vessels always ventured off the eyeball.

Since this was a test of impairing my vision, I felt as though this was a memory test as well, so I decided to create a second study where I was able to look at the image but not the page.

The second study was created on a much smaller scale of paper (A5) and I was able to continually look at the image, however, this did not necessarily help me to create a more accurate during.

The aim of these studies was to show how blindness can impair your function, however, I think it ended up showing that blindness doesn’t just affect your eyes, it affects your whole body. This coincides It has shown that our systems work together, so even if one element is impaired it impairs others. It was only until after I created the studies that I realised, that actually the first study was a more accurate representation of how blind people would struggle to draw. I was so focused on the fact that I wanted to show blindness that I didn’t realise that blind people wouldn’t have the ability to look at an image, they would be relying on memory as well.

I was initially inspired by Ian Sklarsky to create a blind drawing because he creates blind contour studies. It’s hard to be influenced by a specific style when it comes to blind drawing because obviously, you can’t see what you are drawing. However, what intrigues me to most and what I found most relatable to my project, was the fact that even though the object is messy and looks strange to the normal, you can still tell what it is.

I have found this technique is able to let your imagination and creativity flow easily because you aren’t constrained to perfection. I think it creates a finished image that actually reflects a malfunction, rather than an implied malfunction as there is a deeper concept.

I developed this study by photoshopping the impaired eye drawings onto my wire skull drawing. I think this will show the audience that everything in our body is connected, so when one organ malfunctions, it’s likely it will affect other body systems too.