Category: Crafts and Hobbies
I know that some of us here love to do arts and crafts. These can range from sewing to pottery, to wodd working to making things with various materials like on the pipe cleaners posting. But while reading that post I started thinking. I wouldn't know how to make some of those things based on looks. For example, if someone told me to make an image of a dog out of clay, I could, but only based on how my hands could percieve one. I'd miss the subtle details of the face, of colour etc, because I've never seen them. I couldn't make a bee, a lion or a sky scraper cause I've never touched those things. I'm sure it's different for those who've seen versus for those of us, such as myself, who haven't. So my question to the totals who've never seen is what kinds of crafts do you enjoy? If it's something where you make things not immediately recognisible like cups, plates etc, how do you get the images in your minds? If you were to feel something that wasn't three-d, could you make it three-d in your heads or would you need that statue or full wooden carving of something or even the thing itself to be able to see it with the mind's eye and then reproduce it? I know I do.
Art is not always an exact representation of what an object is. You don't have to get every detail perfect. My mother used to collect statues that, at least to me, hardly looked human because they lacked any details. They were merely human shaped, and that was it. She loved them.
Are is whatever you want it to be, not what is seen.
I've done pieces of art that are based on smell, that aren't even meant to be looked at. I've done clay figures that were merely based on a sound. You can do endless numbers of things with art, and with all kinds of mediums, if you just put your mind to it and use your imagination. Sight has very little to do with it.
Wow! I'm really interested to hear more about your work. I've never understood abstract art. For me, if it's supposed to be a leaf or a table, it should look like one. But things based on smell and sound have got to be cool. *smile* And those statues sound extremely interesting.
I love to work with the pottery wheel, and usually imagine a vase or bowl before making it. I favoured a bell-shape for the vase, or maybe a rounder one for a goblet. It depends on what my hands do as well. Not being profficient with pottery, I am still learning, but I agree with silver lightning. Its what is in your mind that is important. For art which depicts animals, plants or humans, personally, I would have to go by objects that I touched, or imagine what they look like. Getting exact detail would be nice, but isn't always possible.
Art is what the artist perceives it to be. You can use representations of things to give you ideas or to try to make replicas, or just work off your imagination and what you think something should look like, or what you want it to look like. It's all up to the artist. If you do pottery and want to paint and glaze it, keep your colors in a certain order and then you won't get mixed up on what color you want where. Same with painting or drawing.
Okay, but how can a totally blind person paint or draw? I don't mean putting lines on the paper, I mean keep track of what is being painted/drawn? I know we can used raised line kits but then we'd have to work backwards. I've heard of exhibits of art made by blind and visually-impaired people and was amazed. But usually, these are fully tactile things, so it's understandable how they did them. I'm not trying to put anyone down. I'm just really curious.
I've heard of blind people using a painting or drawing technique that is not a raised line drawing but a type of paint that createds a raised image so that it can be touched as well as seen.
A blind person can draw pictures with a ball point pen and a peace of paper.
If you get a peace of cardboard such as the kind on the back of a spiral bound notebook, it will be easy.
put your paper on the cardboard and start drawing.
The trick is how much pressure you put on the pen.
If you put enough pressure on the pen, you can feel the indentations the pen leaves on the paper.
Make sure you don't press so hard on the pen that you tear the paper.
When you are finished drawing, you can turn the paper over and you can feel your picture.
This can work with penciles, but the led always breaks when I do it.
It does not work with felt tipped pens or markers.
Thanks to all of you for your enlightenment. I've learned alot in this post. Art is a truly fascinating subject.
Well I just made a simple and very crude pipe tool for my smoking pipe because due to the cultural pressures or whatever out here I can't get me one.
I took the description off the Internet, went into my garage with a couple beers and a belt knife plus the little pen knife I have, sawed off a length of dowl, shaped the tamper and on the other end worked out a reamer. Very crude yes, and nothing like you all talk about, and my next one will probably include a real pick - but I am partial to wood carvings. When I kept birds, I would design perches and things, all this generally using a hand saw to cut to length, and knives to shape and carve. I find I can work with this because I can stop and check what I'm doing and even fix it where it's uneven.
I think you have to decide who it's for also. In the case of bird material, it had to be sturdy because it was gonna be bitten, shaken, shat upon, and generally treated with the most extensive misuse possible. For my pipe tool, well it's my first, and I only have a cob pipe for now, so it was more of an experiment, to be expounded upon later when my friend gets done making my wooden pipe.
If making something for someone sighted, I try and be extra careful about inconsistencies or any type of unevenness, because whether they want to or not, they'll be drawn to any malformations visually. It's not their fault; it's like a moth to light ... there's a scratch or a ding or an angle that's not quite right, that's really all they'll be able to see. That's not a criticism, I imagine it's probably pretty elemental and has served an evolutionary purpose. But that is one major reason why I have not really done anything strictly visual except for flower arranging which you can do straight up without sight, once you understand certain botanical constraints, and when buying the parts from the florist you make sure all the colors are a definite match. Since I have no emotional understanding of color - it is all pure intellectual for me - I generally use one primary and then filler with Babys Breath or one of the more common fillers. But I have only done that for my wife ...
I have seen the results of pottery before. I had a sister who was into it. What she made, to me looked really good, though she said it wasn't apparently. I have never tried it. It seems with sticky clay you might have trouble applying any form of measurement to it, but I don't know.
As to drawing, I did some with a tracing wheel for my own benefit; when I was a synthesist (creating sounds for keyboards) in the early nineties. But that was to design a wave form, give myself a picture.
I just notice that with most things once a sighted person sees it, their first impression is its off-centeredness or something, apparently subtle and probably not even a geometric degree but as I said earlier, its the first thing that catches their eye.
I can't imagine attempting to draw; that sounds arduous. The closest I've come is applying paint thinner or stain to wood, which generally has no visual ill effect.
For drawing, I can see dark lines, but it's hard to draw shapes. If someone said to draw a circle, it would come out wavy and more oval. This is probably because of a narrow field of vision.
I've always been more towards abstract when it comes to art, it's a little looser on what you can do as it doesn't make you stay to a certain form.