Art vs. Language
This article was originally written for my periodic column at the online magazine Comixtalk in July 2004. In my last article, I wrote about the problems facing the designation of the “comics medium […]
From “learning to draw” to “acquiring a visual vocabulary”
Many people feel they “can’t draw”, which seems odd given assumptions about drawing as a direct pathway to visual concepts. Most of us can see, so why can’t we draw? […]
“Bad anatomy” and body objectification in comics
Greg Land cover and redrawn version from www.themarysue.com The recent uproar over the covers of Spider-Woman books by Marvel has lead to cries that they are both sexist and poorly […]
New article: Framing “I can’t draw”
I’m happy to say that I have a new article (pdf) published in the journal Culture & Psychology! This one continues with my theories about how people learn how to […]
The Principle of Equivalence
An overarching theme across my research is the idea that the structure and cognition of drawing and sequential images is comparable to that of language. I have tried to formalize […]
New Article: Explaining “I can’t draw”
I’m happy to say that I have a new article published in the journal Human Development that argues that learning how to draw is similar to learning how to speak. […]
Development of drawing abilities
The book Making Sense of Children’s Drawings by John Willats puts forth a compelling theory of how kids learn to draw, and the course of that development. To Willats, drawings link up […]
Review: “Copying and Artistic Behaviors”
Smith argues that the negative views on “copying” demonstrated by art educators since the 50s is misplaced in some contexts. She claims that some forms of copying are good, and […]
Kid’s sequential drawings
This is a summary/review of an article I thought had particularly compelling evidence for why understanding sequential images is a learned trait. Highlights are all mine… Narratives of urban Japanese […]
Predispositions for drawing
A recent comment to another blog post raised some interesting issues so I figured I should bump it up to a full discussion here. The basic issue is whether drawing […]