Quote:
|
You can't expect the people looking at your work to close one eye.
|
I'm not sure anyone has suggested this, Tim, though it's admittedly been a long time since I've read back through this thread. But your reference to gun sights is most instructive, because when I'm doing the measuring for sight-size work, I'm "sighting" through my plumb line (or brush handle or calipers or whatever is preferred) held at arms length. If I don't close one eye, binocular vision prevents me from focusing at such close range on both the plumb line and the object in nature at the same time, which defeats the whole purpose.
Now once the measuring is done, once I no longer need to sight "through" the plumb line, then sure, there's no need any longer to close one eye. Then a different way of seeing takes over, essentially memory work. I look with both eyes at the object in nature, hold that image in memory, then look at my drawing or painting (which should be positioned in the same field of vision as the object in nature) to see if it "matches", and to the extent that it doesn't, and to the extent that the difference is important to me, I make corrections. I do all this with both eyes open (unless I need to squint to see value shapes!!), just as I would expect a viewer to approach the piece.