Do you suck at drawing faces?
Of course you do!
Because science!
Hey there aspiring artists, thanks for tuning into DNews, I'm Trace.
Faces are notoriously hard to draw well.
There are lots of tiny details that even professional artists have trouble with ... I keep thinking
of those scenes in The Matrix Reloaded... the animation was so cartoony.
Well, a study in the journal Perception -- yep, real journal -- looked at why we always draw
faces funny, and it has to do with psychology.
When you look at a face, you're looking primarily at the eyes, because we are social animals.
BUT just because you're LOOKING at the eyes, doesn't mean you know where they are.
Ready for the mind-blower?
After this is over, go to your camera and look at your HEAD -- top of the HAIR to bottom
of the chin, the eyes, they're in the middle!
When humans draw faces, we tend to put the eyes near the TOP of the head, but that's
not where they are at all!
In the study, the researchers asked people to draw faces from memory, after looking at
a picture for 30 seconds, and then OUTRIGHT COPYING -- each time, we would put the eyes
waay up on the forehead, like a neandertal or something.
What's up with that?
They've got more research to do, but they have three hypotheses -- Face-from-below:
or the idea that our perception is constructed on a childhood or newborn map of the face.
Hair-as-hat -- i like this one a lot -- people think of the hair as sitting on top of the
head, but not PART of the head.
And Head-as-a-box -- the researchers like this one -- people suck at drawing round things.
These researchers think we've got a bias to putting them high on the face because round
shapes are exceedingly difficult to draw.
Italian proto-Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone was said to have drawn a perfect circle,
freehand, to prove he was the greatest artist in Italy.
Understanding roundness and faces is taught in art classes to this day.
These scientists believe we put too much emphasis on the FEATURES of the face because of the
social connection.
That, combined with our cognitive bias against roundness, means we draw faces improperly.
The researchers are going to test more by asking volunteers to draw using animals and
other faces, but a 2012 paper from University College London believes practice makes perfect.
It's not just that we're not seeing things properly, like the study in Perception found,
but ALSO we use mental shortcuts to take in only relevant information.
Any regular DNews watcher knows the brain is a lazy lump of cells -- and when we look
at a scene we choose what we WANT to see.
Their study found people's drawing ability improved greatly when they were asked to practice
and study something with great detail, drawing it over, and over again.
Maybe next time they should draw faces 10 times rather than just one!
How are you at drawing faces?
Tell us below and speaking of drawing: are you a fan of anime?
k-pop?
how about just television in general!
Totally check out Catie Wayne's newest thingy -- Fandom Beat!
Her weekly show fanboys and fangirls all over pop culture with this week's episode getting
down with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
She's wearing costumes, guys.
COSTUMES!
Subscribe to her show here and thanks for watching DNews!
Tweet at me at-TraceDominguez and come talk with us on Facebook -- 4 million science lovers
already have!