Art, Language, and "Cognitive Equivalence"

When I usually speak about the Art versus Language Perspectives, I usually couch it in a view that there are "different potential ways our society treats graphic images." As I just realized, stating it in this way maybe obscures the true intent of the distinctions.

Really, this is a hypothesis about cognition.

At the heart of my theory of visual language is the observation that we have three modalities by which we can convey our concepts: Sound, Body motions (faces/hands), and creating graphic images. That's it. To push it further, the theory is that when these modalities take on structured sequences governed by a system of constraints (a grammar), it becomes a type of language: speech, sign language, or visual language.

The "Language Perspective" assumes that all systems of conceptual expression work in similar ways — what we can maybe call "cognitive modality equivalence" or some such. Under such a view, we would expect for the graphic modality (drawings) to operate under the same principles as the verbal and manual domains.

If you look at the ways that speech and gestures (and sign language) grow developmentally in children and are used and treated in society, you see certain patterns — conventionality, imitation, communality, etc. While many of those patterns do emerge in the graphic domain, they appear "dampened", are dismissed, or just aren't recognized as such.

So, the question becomes raised: "Why don't you see these things fully in the graphic modality?" and/or "why don't we know them when we see them?"

The offered explanation is the Art Perspective — a cultural force that suppresses the patterns that would normally emerge from any other modality of conceptual expression. With polar opposite emphases, the Art Perspective works to dampen the "usual" course of development and treatment for graphic images.

So, given this, a new set of questions can be asked about this underlying "cognitive modality equivalence": What are the trends that a conceptually expressive system shows in development and society? How do modalities differ? Do these trends reflect broader cognitive processes than just conceptually expressing systems?

The Art of Visual Language

As much as I stress how the Art and Language perspectives/paradigms of viewing graphic communication are opposed to each other, I do think that they can be reconciled. Just to recap, I believe that a cultural force, what I call the "Art Perspective" suppresses the visual-graphic form of expression, which is closer to a "Language Perspective." Some of the things that differ in these paradigms' emphasizes are:

Art Perspective
• Individuality and Innovation
• Imitation is bad
• Iconicity = just perception
• Cross-cultural Universality
• Innate talent or skill
• Etc.

... Versus...

Language Perspective
• Communally used signs
• Imitation is central
• Patterned graphic regularities
• Diversity requiring fluency
• Innate potential for acquired system
• Etc.

What I've argued for mainly is that at the base understanding, the visual-graphic modality should not be thought of as "Art." Rather, it should simply be considered a mode of conceptual expression, whereby "Art" is a socio-cultural designation that may or may not be applied to its usage.

So, given this perspective, the Art viewpoint can easily be applied to usage of this visual language at least on some levels.

Individuality and innovation can be applied to usage and not form. For instance, instead of emphasizing that people should all draw in unique and different ways, it would be easy for people to all use a common style whereby they create novel expressions with those signs. On this level, imitation could still be "bad" — while imitation to establish the skill set for drawing is necessary.

Take manga for instance. Many (certainly not all) manga are drawn in a conventionalized style in which authors have individualistic voices, yet largely share a common visual vocabulary. But, they can then have potential to create novel stories and expressions out of that conventionalized vocab. (This doesn't mean that they do it per se, there is still quite a lot of derivative stories in manga).

The "Talent" issue can also come out here. Instead of judging people on how "good they are at drawing", given an acknowledgment of graphic fluency, talent is recognized for what people do with their drawing ability, just like we recognize that good writers make use of their common vocab by using it in inspiring ways.

In all cases, the emphasis here is that the Art perspective is not necessarily applied to the image-making itself (or the development of that ability), but rather it's about the usage of that capacity. The Language perspective holds true at the base level of identifying the capacity for (sequential) image-making, while the Art perspective is applied interpretively to its usage.

Reruns: Fight the Comic Aristocracy

I have a "rerun" of my older article Fight the Comic Aristocracy over at Sequart. It deals with the the "aristocratic" structures that are in the comic industry and the democratizing force that the notion of "visual language" can have in contrast to it.

I used the term "aristocratic" there pretty much to stand in for "Bourgeoisie" or "elitist", but in a somewhat broader more abstract sense. In retrospect it does admittedly sound a bit hokey, but I couldn't really think of something better. Ah well.

When it was originally posted over at (the-then-) Comixpedia, they broke it up into two separate articles, while here I've retained it in its intentional one big piece. I've also cleaned it up a bit and junked a few parts that I thought were clunky. So, if you didn't get enough when it came out a couple years ago, enjoy it once again!

The Art Perspective

A friend of mine got an advanced copy of a book on comics that will be coming out this summer. I'd prefer not to identify it by name here, but it had a great paragraph summarizing what I would call a driving viewpoint of the "Art Perspective":

"The fact that drawing style is the most immediate aspect of comics means that what you see when you look at a comic book is a particular, personal vision of its artist's vision—not what the artist's eye sees, but the way the artist's mind interprets sight. That's not unique to comics of course: it's true of any artist... Since comics are cartooned instead of conventionally drawn, though, they're more obviously distorted by the artist's vision."

Despite expressing that my interest in the Art vs. Language perspectives regarding drawing are only analytical, I have been accused of deriding the Art Perspective. I am "descriptive" insofar as I am not actively "advocating" the practice of one belief set over the other. People are free to do whatever they want in practice (and certainly, as a product of my culture, my own graphic development took the Art perspective).

However, I am most certainly condemning the Art Perspective as an ineffective paradigm for thinking about graphic creation. Here's why...

I don't believe that drawing has anything to do with "someone's vision of the world." I think drawing has to do entirely with formulating a mental storage of "structures of drawing" (i.e. "Photological" structures) that are actively outputted when the context arises.

It works just like the sounds of language. You take in the graphic patterns, store them cognitively (creating a stock of basic schemas), and output them as necessary. If you're taking in only visual perception, you're not providing your mental structures with the building blocks it needs—you have to create them on the fly, which is far harder — especially given that human's (and especially children's) minds/brains are "pattern seeking machines." The main difference is that the structures in speech are symbolic sounds, while those of drawing often resemble what they mean.

Indeed, the belief that children naturally grow their graphic "personal vision" from some pure innateness is ridiculous if you consider a perspective that compares it to other aspects of child development. While the ability to draw is innate, it's maturation is not. This "pure development" stops around puberty for most cultures, Japan being the most notable exception. What seems to be going on here? This is the apex of a learning period, like many other developmental learning periods (the most prominent being language).

Why do Japanese children overcome this drop-off in ability (and seem to have a higher proficiency at drawing than other cultures)? As I discuss in my book, I suspect it's because they 1) read a lot of comics (i.e. have mass exposure to the visual language in manga) and 2) are consisitently drawing in this visual language by imitating it. This is not "talent" or something special about Japanese people — it's purely about stimulus-response.

This is just like any other language: if you have exposure, imitate to learn, and put in the time for learning, you develop naturally. If it's just left up to "nature" to run its course without outside influence and/or consistent practice, you get marginal results.

More on Imitation in Drawing

Brent Wilson and Marjorie Wilson have done a lot of great work on child drawing that has influenced my thinking, especially since they take comics and manga into account a lot. I got to meet Brent last year at a manga exhibit, and he was a really nice guy. Here's another good (old) article that I recently read (it won't be the last):

Wilson, Brent, and Marjorie Wilson. "An Iconoclastic View of the Imagery Sources in the Drawings of Young People." Art Education 30.1 (1977): 4-12.

Wilson and Wilson present findings that contrast the century-old belief that imitation is bad for learning to draw. This view focused on the belief that children have an innate purity to drawing that emerges out of their natural tendencies. Imitation is thought to defile this purity. Additionally, due to their iconicity, drawing has been seen as the correspondence between the world and mental equivalences of those objects.

The Wilsons' data counteracts this with the observations that of the hundreds of drawings gathered from high school students, virtually all of them could be traced back to imitation of some other source of representation (especialy comics and cartoons, but not much fine-art). They note that the learning of drawing might be more similar to learning words (though they don't seem to really know what that means beyond common sense knowledge).

They propose that people are using/creating mental models for drawing, and that minor modifications to generalized structures can aid in creating specific representations. At times, these models would be begun to be employed, yet abandoned part way through if the drawer couldn't produce the desired result with that schema.

People might also have mental models for one type of representation, but be unable to do drawings outside of that model. So, drawing novel objects either results in sub-adaquate ability or deploy existing models from other domains.

In total, people seem to be able to store hundreds of these types of mental models. For instance, one subject who drew comics could create figures in innumerable ways. When drawing a figure he hasn't before, they hypothesize that he "averages" several of the models together to produce the new form. To me, this raises the question whether the aggregation of these models creates a singular more abstract schema or whether it remains a catalogue of numerous "malleable" models.

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This means the mind has a place to store such visual schemas, a "photological" component akin to a "phonological" component for spoken language. As I've said before, if perception is the desired stimulus for drawing, models aren't created from existing models — so the system never creates a conventional set of signs.

And just to riff on my previous post, this is also the reason why drawing perspective might be "awkward" for learners — because it sidesteps metal modeling in order to exact a system of depth through measurement (as opposed to schemas... though "loose" drawing of perspective might involve some level of mental modeling created by learning how to do it. I'll have to see if there's research on that...).

I had a 13-ish year old student when I taught "drawing comics" in an afterschool program, who could not draw perspective for a tile floor in a hallway. He drew the receding lines of the hall walls with us as a group, then when drawing the floor on his own he drew it flat — like an aerial view. My interpretation: he couldn't override his existing mental models for spatial representation with new ones for perspective. That's not to say he couldn't if he worked at it, but at that moment he couldn't do it.

Finally, note that perspective and schemas are both learned — the difference is that one is acquired "effortlessly" through imitation (as they'd say in language acquisition) and the other is taught explicitly.

Art 'n' stuff

Apparently, I've inspired Nathan Sandler enough that he devoted his inaugural blog posts to critiquing my thoughts on Art vs. Language. I'm flattered that he's spent the time to write out his thoughts, and even more that he found my work thought-provoking enough to mull so much about them.

Unfortunately, I don't think he quite got what I was aiming at with the ideas of Art vs. Language. In lieu of what would assuredly be annoying, I won't make a direct rebuttal, but try to clarify my position a bit since any confusion out there might just be because I haven't explained it well enough.

There are actually two separate issues involved in my discussions of Art vs. Language. The first involves socio-cultural labeling, the second is about how people treat images in our culture especially in regard to learning to draw. Let's start with the first one...

1) Art as an identifying label to justify comics' worth

My notion of visual language is largely about drawing — and moreso about drawing sequences of images. Those drawings (and sequences) are governed by mental rules, and by nature are what I'd call a "visual language."

Whether you want to call that use of the visual language "Art" largely depends on its context. Not all drawings are conceived of as "Art" (though they are sometimes terminologically conflated) — but nor are all uses of the English language called "Art." (...unless you're post-modern enough to say that everything is "art," which is fine, though I think it fails as a useful notion if it's so all-inclusive).

The point is that the label "Art" is applied interpretively to whatever it's talking about — be it process or form (issue #1).

I have no real desire to "define" the notion of "art" — I agree with the cliché that "I know it when I see it," and I generally think that's true for most people. But, for a notion so categorically vague, how can it inherently apply to anything? Why should this notion of "comics" (the socio-cultural context that this visual language is used in) be inherently "Art" at all?

And, perhaps more important to people's concerns usually... how can such an ephemeral concept be used to defend the notion and status of "comics" in society?

This idea is prescriptive: Playing the role of a critic, I think defining "comics" as "art" is less effective toward their gaining public acceptance than a notion of visual language.

2) "Art" as a sociocultural frame for treating drawings

Issue #2 of my "art vs. language" track has to do with the forces of influence on how people (and especially children) learn to draw. This is where I trot out the "Art Perspective" as a notion of the cultural forces of a particular mentality that work to temper the way people in our society draw, but I'll leave that to other posts.

This idea is descriptive: Playing the role of an academic, I'm only making analysis of the various evidence and concepts involved, and am not advocating for any type of practice per se.

In any case, I love that Nathan devoted such a long post to all this (and seems to continue to prod my stuff), and look forward to reading what else he comes up with.

Review: "Copying and Artistic Behaviors"

Smith, N. R. (1985). "Copying and Artistic Behaviors: Children and Comic Strips." Studies in Art Education 26(3): 147-156

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 the relative value of copying is based on three factors: need, model, and process. She examines varying fields through use of a corpus of comics produced by American children, noting that themes and genres are copied greatly. She didn't find that the children copied the drawing style as much.

My curiosity is whether this is due to lack of practice/exposure though. The examples given by a child with "unusual ability" seem hardly on par with Japanese drawings of children of the same age that copy manga en masse. This child did copy various elements of drawings, though not absolutely. For instance, when copying Charlie Brown, he imitated parts but altered/left out others. Another child drew the typical "lumpy" figure of Captain America to show his musculature. Smith conjectures that his intent was to draw someone "strong" as opposed to drawing a bicep in particular.

To this extant, these children's copying seems to be drawing characters/features to the point of recognition — not iconic match. In other words, they're trying to convey concepts visually, not create "realistic" pictures (or even "accurately" imitated images).

While interesting to see much support given to imitation, most of it is not structural, and still maintains an "Art" perspective. The "need" assigned to copying is largely social or emotional/psychological, not structural or cognitive. (For instance, it says imitation suits a child's need to "play out" conflict in fantasy, as opposed to saying that children copy because their brains are pattern seeking machines).

Social need is Language-like though, as it heralds conventionality. She also marks copying as important as a natural behavior in socialization, since "younger children initiate copying as a means of acquiring desired knowledge" while "older children want to master images representative of their culture" (147).

Also interesting was her statement why she wanted to look at comics in the first place: "Comic strips are of interest because children frequently and spontaneously initiate copying of them despite disapproval" (148). No citation is given to this statement, but are comics copied more than other forms of visual communcations in culture? (it wouldn't surprise me if the answer is "yes") And, if so, doesn't that say something about the structure of the stimuli in relation to the human mind — like maybe these signs are somehow attuned to acquisition and socialization?

16 panels that are Still Conventional whether you think they work or not

I neglected posting this ealier in the week, but John Morris has a parody/homage to Wally Wood's 22 Panels that always work over at Comixpedia entitled 16 Panels That I Don't Think Work All That Well. There are a couple things I find theoretically interesting about it.

First off, it is a great compilation of conventionalized patterns used in many comics. Just like WW's 22 Panels and the Peanuts patterns I've been finding recently, this list excellently shows how there are systematic and conventionalized patterns in the visual language used in comics. This is in contrast to the view that graphic creation is unrestrained because it mimics perception, and thereby lacks an experss system of mentally stored patterns. Astute observations like these 16 panels excellently show that there is systematic and patterned visual vocabulary used by "visual language speakers" (and I wish more people would do work like this!).

The second thing this list shows is a preference for the use of some representations over others (WW's 22 Panels does this too, though positively as opposed to negatively). Linguistics has often been in perpetual debate with journalists/English teachers/etc. that believe there is a right or wrong way to use language. We are often told "not to end a sentence with a preposition," or "not to split infinitives" — though these are not in any way real rules of English grammar. (They were prescribed by grammar book writers in the 18th century who were enamored with Latin — so they advocated Latin's rules for English, not at all being sensitive to the fact that, y'know, they're totally different languages!!).

This list's intent is prescriptive in the same way. Despite these being consistent conventional trends used in this visual language, they are gauged by their value in usage. An additional aspect to this is the Art perspective most invoked in the comments below the article. Most people object to these panels simply because they are conventional! They're "overused," which means they aren't new and innovative/original — which makes them undesirable to the Art viewpoint.

However, none of this mitigates the fact that these panel types are conventional. The linguist would say "they're all part of language, let's observe how people use them" while the prescriptivist says "they're part of language, but they really shouldn't be, and those who use them are less sophisticated speakers."

It's interesting to note also that no matter how loudly prescriptivism might object to such "bad" usage, it never has an effect on shaping language usage. It's not like split infinitives have gone away because people advocate against them! Nor do I suspect these 16 panels to go away either.

In some ways both aspects of a list like this shows some good headway in recognition of this visual language as a language on the whole. Not only are people recognizing the patterns, they're also judging them prescriptively, just like any other language!

Visual Fluency... aka "Pissing off Writers"

There's a been a little hullabaloo lately about Jesse Hamm's recent blog post on "Why Comic Book Writers Oughta Mind Their Own Business," and the Mark Waid reply. Attitudes displayed by both sides aside, I actually agree with Jesse's sentiment, but I think there's some deeper issues going on here in this "artist vs. writer" clash.

What's really at issue here is the level of fluency a person has in producing this visual language that is used in comics. Most of the time graphic production is viewed as a matter of skill — how good someone is at "drawing pictures" or maybe "telling a story" as opposed to being a fluent vs. not fluent producer in an explicit system of expression.

"Artists" — those who are demonstrably graphically fluent — rightfully are justified in feeling perturbed at being dictated to by writers, whose graphic fluency might be questionable. Jesse's post highlights the disjunct that occurs when "artists" are being directed by a writer who is not graphically fluent.

There is a difference between fluency in comprehension and production. Children whose parents speak different languages than the general populace sometimes might be able to understand what their parents say, but they might not speak it. This occurs en masse in our society for visual language — especially since it's a print culture with no reciprocal exchange of expression. Most people in our culture are fluent readers of visual language, but just being able to comprehend is not sufficient enough to be able to produce.

Beyond proudction, there are some cultures — and individuals — that cannot comprehend sequences of comic images. Reading ability between fluent comprehenders also varies as well. Experimental eye-tracking data show explicit differences in the path of eye movement between "expert" and "non-expert" comic readers when navigating through comic pages. Other studies have shown that skill in comprehension of panel sequences and memory of them increases with age, indicating a maturation of expertise.

Further experiments show that children from countries with limited comic reading (i.e. like America) cannot produce sequential images at a high proficiency (in some studies, over 2/3 of the subjects could not create sequences where one panel has some connection to its adjacent panels). In a truly fluent populace like Japan where most all children read and draw manga as part of the culture, 100% of children tested can create sequential images at a high degree of proficiency using complex visual grammar.

We need to move beyond the naive belief that drawing is just a "skill" in a "universal" "art form" (that is equally expressible by those who do or don't have the skill) and towards the cognitive reality that it requires a graphic fluency in an explicit system of expression that must be learned and developed... leaving a large group of people with degrees of limited fluency.

(... just like any other language).

Thoughts on a visual e/i-language

Big breath; prepare for a long post...

Most of the time, people think about languages as being "out there in the world" – consisting of a conventional list of words and rules that we all access. This leads to people commenting frequently things like "that's not a word," out of the belief that there is some external authority that dictates what is or isn't in a language.

In contrast, a cognitive approach to language looks at it as a phenomenon of individual's minds, and that the mutual conventionality of many minds creates the artiface of a system that is "out there" abstracted from those individuals. Several linguists have tried to delineate the relationship of a language to its speakers.

The first major one would have to be Ferdinand de Saussure, who made the breakdown between langue and parole. While parole describes a language in use as a dynamic social activity, langue was the notion of an abstract system of expression beyond its usage.

Noam Chomsky did Saussure one better though. Chomsky maintains that this system of expression is located squarely within a human mind/brain, what he calls an internal or i-language. In contrast, and external or e-language covers both of Saussure's terms: 1) external speech behavior and 2) the system as something in the world, abstracted as we call English or Chinese.

In reality, E-langauges are built out of the mutual intelligibility of people's i-languages, which often differ based on geography and community. A good example is an irregular derviational rule like the plural of "cactus." For a Southern Californian like me, the plural is the irregular "cacti," because it's common enough in daily life to be out of the ordinary. But for, say, a Bostonian who lives around me now and never interacts with them, the prickly stuff might be called "cactuses" using the plural "s" rule of English. Both are "right" in a cognitive sense, because the cognitive structure differs based on ecological context (most jargon is like this too).

An "e-language" distinction dislikes this, yet it's the reason that dialects exist at all. They are just degrees to which people's mutual intelligiblity of i-languages group in a graded way. The "r"-less Bostonians down the road from me certainly have different rules that they follow in their i-language than I do, but our systems are close enough that we understand each other.

And... all this is setting up some useful concepts for what I really want to talk about: drawing.

I've discussed previously that there is a cultural force of an "Art perspective" that affects the development of people's drawings skills in our culture. While they may be cognitively inclined towards imitation, the Art perspective guides them towards having an individualistic style and away from using the shared structures of a community.

OR, in Chomsky's terms... the Art perspective pushes people to have i-languages that (for the most part) don't build into an e-language. There are some exceptions to this of course, maily in conventional symbols like word balloons and speed lines.

Note the semiotic allowance here though: the symbolic aspects must be conventionalized and thus easily build to a shared structure that becomes more "out there" in the world abstracted from users. But, the broader iconicity of the system (that the signs resemble what they look like) allows for a degree of mutual intelligibility without mandated conventionality. This lets individuals' styles be inexplicably tied to their own i-languages.

We immediately recognize people's styles as belonging just to them, expressing their i-language, not tied to a broader visual e-language. And, people tend to get in a huff when other people "encroach" upon one's visual i-langauge. This is the taboo of copying another person's style, instead of being looked at as building or accessing a broader visual e-language.

A result of this is the belief that images have no explicit system behind them at all, since no e-language is built. Again, since drawings are iconic, and everyone's i-languages tend to differ so much, there is an appeal to perceptual knowledge as why we can understand images, instead of a specific cognitive system at work in graphic creation.

Mannerism, Imitation, and Iconic Bias

Dirk (who kindly keeps linking to my posts) provides some thoughts on my last post about imitation by describing "Mannerism" (about halfway down the post).

He describes the Renaissance Mannerists (what I'll call abstractly as "cohort 2") copied the style of the first wave of Renaissance artists like Leonardo and Michaelangelo that came before them ("cohort 1"). Where cohort 1 actually studied the anatomy of real animals and people, cohort 2 simply copied cohort 1. As a result, cohort 2 is said by Dirk to have...

"the surface tics of the Rennaissance masters down pat, but his work displays none of the anatomical understanding by which they came to be able to create such accomplished illusions of form and light. Mannerism is an artistic game of Whisper, with details lost and distorted as they move further away from their point of origin."

Dirk goes on apply this same process to describe the work of Rob Liefeld and others (who I've oddly defended on this front before).

Now, this quote to me summarizes almost exactly the points I made last time that are inherent to the "Art" perspective. With Mannerism, it's not just about copying — it's that cohort 1 didn't copy at all, they drew from real life. This is what I've called Iconic Bias in past posts (parts one, two, three): The belief that the graphic modality of expression should resemble real life ("iconicity" in the semiotic sense). The "purity" of that first cohort is drawn from iconicity, and the lack of it in cohort 2 leads to their derision.

My response is that this isn't the way the human mind is primed (the "Language" perspective): the mind is primed for imitation, and any drawing "style" is a reflection of mental patterns that have become habituated within a drawer's long-term memory. Those patterns become set in this case through one of two ways: 1) copying other people's patterns, or 2) copying perception and siphoning that iconicity through one's mental structures.

The "Art" perspective says that only choice two should be acceptable, with minimal influence from choice one. Recall for instance, McCloud's Six Steps of learning from Understanding Comics: His first level is imitation, but then all subsequent steps require one to cast aside all other influences.

But, as I've pointed out in the past, rejecting the influence of any cohort before your own works against the establishment of conventional signs — which are what language is made up entirely of. The only reason there is a "graphic dialect" of a superhero style at all is because of imitation. Manga thrive on a style that was founded on imitation (Tezuka being largely considered cohort 1, but Walt Disney and others being cohort -1 for him).

Imitation hasn't hurt manga at all. In fact, I'd argue that it has probably helped them in numerous ways: 1) A consistent cultural style allows more focus to be placed on what that style is used to express story-wise than so much focus on the surface depictions. 2) A consistent style across numerous authors is more readily accessible to young readers, especially those who want imitate them. In America, when children want to "draw comics," they want to draw stories about stuff. But, when kids want to "draw manga" they want to draw stories in the style of manga because that's the visual vocabulary that they are now exposed to.

This is just like language: "Exposure + practice = fluency." With language, successive cohorts are always the manner by which it is transmitted. A great example of this is Nicaraguan Sign Language, where several deaf children who had created their own gesture systems combined their contributions to make cohort 1. Successive cohorts took what they did only to refine and alter it into further grammatical patterns. With the anti-imitation influence of Art, this process of conventionalization is largely lost (outside symbolic signs like word balloons and speed lines at least).

The Art pespective just wants to substitute the cognitive man-made exposure for that of real life, and with that, jettisoning an idea of fluency (proficiency in a system) for skill (accuracy at depicting real life): "Perception + practice = skill at representing perception."

While I won't go into it at length, I find it intriguing that in Dirk's same post, there is a damning attitude for Greg Land, who takes iconicity to the extreme by drawing wholly from photo reference — only that he picks and chooses parts of photos to combine thereby messing up the anatomy. So, here it seems to be the case of messing up iconicity through the most iconic method possible!


Final note, so my intentions aren't misunderstood: I should point out that this is not a post of advocacy; I'm not saying people should or shouldn't copy other people. I'm just trying to analyze the issues involved, and in some case, defend all strategies as being cognitively acceptable.

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Update 2/26: Dirk has a short reply to this post (halfway down). I don't have much in response to it except that it still maintains the "Iconic bias" underlying the last couple posts . Beyond that, he makes some interesting points.

Imitation is bad!... in the immediate

This post over at CBR had an interesting take on some of the Art vs. Language issues that I discuss, so I felt I should link to it. One of its main arguments is the common thread of "don't imitate other people's styles," i.e. be an individual.

The anti-imitation viewpoint (what I call related to the "Art" perspective) is wrapped up in two ideas: 1) that people should be "individuals" in their drawing style — different from other people. 2) That drawing is an imitation of life (Iconicity), and that a person's style is simply their own manner of siphoning those visuals into graphic form.

Both of these run against the "Language" perspective which pushes communal signs that are conventionally shared amongst a culture, learned through imitation. In Language, it isn't so much a matter of using novel structures (words, drawing styles) but of using those structures to say something interesting and novel.

What I thought was interesting about this post in particular is well expressed in this paragraph (italics from the original):

Don't imitate John Cassaday, find out who John's inspirations were, whose work he learned from, and imitate them. Because even if you can imitate John's work, or Jim's, or Frank's, etc., the best you can achieve through imitation is a mimicry of style, and to be known as an imitator. Style, good or bad, is really the only thing that's going to separate you from the pack, and it's not something you can add into your work. Not really. Style is where your personality surfaces in your work, and true style is accidental.

The underlying "Art" sentiments should be obvious here, but what's interesting is the belief that it's okay to copy somewhat, just not of the "generation" right before yours. It didn't just say "don't copy other people," instead it argued for people to copy the artists who the-artists-you-like copied!

While I understand the argument, and can sympathize at least somewhat with the sentiment in terms of creative endeavors (i.e. the type expressed in the Dylan quote at that articles start), what really makes copying one generation's drawing styles different than any other? Why is there this assumption that there is a degradation that occurs from one generation to the next, and that somehow there is a more "pure" root that aught to be copied from?

If anything, this lesson in history should show that everyone is influenced by other people and that you can probably trace those influences so far you'll lose track of who the actual people were. So, why not embrace the imitative styles since its what we're mentally inclined to do in the first place?

I love the Language equivalent of this: "Don't learn to speak English from your parents and peers! You should learn from Middle English... Those guys really knew how to speak back then!"

Bizarro Scholarship

While listening today to the last lecture of this semester's Intro to Linguistics class that I TAed for, I was thinking a bit about how some of the underlying issues of scholarship in visual language contrast the way they've been approached in linguistics. By and large, I would say that my intentions for a cognitive and mind based approach to drawing and sequential images fit right in to the intents of modern linguistics. But, some of the minor issues are different.

For instance, there is often a distinction made between "Big L" Language and "little l" language. "Big L" Language is the abstract system of communication that is shared by all humans, composed of certain universal structural principles (things like syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology, etc.). "Little l" language is the instantiation of that system in the world into diverse and varied forms: English, Nicaraguan Sign Language, Chinese, Tagalog, etc. These are the variations that come from the manifestation of an abstract system.

Realizing that all these (little l) languages share a broader structure is a significant step in the study of Language. For one, it recognizes that there is a broader field that unifies the study of all the little ones.

The opposite concern occurs with regard to my notion of visual language. People already recognize a broader capacity for people to draw. It's common, normal, and uncontested as a cross-cultural phenomenon shared by all humans. However, what isnt' acknowledged is that there are "little d" drawings — that cultural forms might actually differ from each other in significant and categorizable ways.

Interestingly enough, this reverse concern yields the same ultimate result: the acknowledgement of an underlying system that is both generalizable and diverse. We can't identify individual visual languages from different cultures (say, the difference between a "superhero dialect" of American VL versus a "shojo dialect" of Japanese VL) without first acknowledging that there is 1) an underlying system behind graphic creation and 2) that the underlying system can differ between cultural populations. No matter which way you start with, the path lead to a recognition of both elements.

Other bizarro turns have been less broad. For instance, when Noam Chomsky was first arguing for generative grammar he emphasized that sentences could run to infinite lengths using finite means (ex. Phil said that Krysta said that Gina said that...). His approach sought to find a system that could have infinite expressions using finite means.

Visual sequences faced the exact opposite issue. McCloud's transitional approach to sequences of "comic" panels left no endpoint except for arbitrary physical restrictions like the end of a page or book — which have no qualitative structural impact on the system of images themselves (i.e. you could take those same images and put them into another context and they'd still process roughly the same... like on a webpage instead of a book). Transitions were inherently infinite.

When I started in on my own generative approach to panel sequences, I very quickly realized that there had to be some end for strings. So, I had to try to establish a notion of visual language "sentence." I had to argue for limitations rather than infiniteness.

I'll be on the lookout for any more of these type of contrasts...

More reruns! Comics≠art

Continuing with the re-posting of my Comixpedia articles, Sequart.com has a posting of my old article Comics’ Identity Crisis: Claiming “Art” is a Misguided Quest. It's weird to see these older papers of mine as if they're new again, and kind of fun. Perhaps if people jump into them again they'll find something new in there...?

For anyone who surfs over from Sequart: thanks for dropping in and welcome to my site!

Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work

It's been interesting to see the explosion of blog entries about Joel Johnson's buying of Wally Wood's 22 Panels that always work. One part of me is a bit dismayed at the news, since a few months ago I actually contacted the seller contemplating buying it myself. I'm extremely greatful that with his new buy Mr. Johnson has made high resolution files available to the rest of us to share in this piece of history.



Theoretically 22 Panels... is an intriguing aspect of comics in America, because it gives a consistent panel sized unit that is (possibly) repeated in multiple books. Repetition (i.e. conventionality) of this sort is of course a hallmark of language. Like Mark Evanier I'd love to see a study probing just how widespread the use of these panels has become.

My own guess is that these compositions have become extremely widespread across authors, largely without them even referring to the 22 Panels... worksheet. That is, I think that some of these panels have become so common in usage that people imitate them without thinking about it, as they have just become a consistent part of the mental visual vocabulary. (As with all issues like this, if any enterprising students out there want to do a study on this, I'd be happy to advise and publish their piece!)

What's also been interesting about reading the various blog posts on this topic is seeing the teetering balance of the Art vs. Language viewpoints. You can really tell the tension between those who have no problem with using the repetition of these panels (Language) and those who scoff at how unoriginal and un-innovative using them would be (Art).

Theory informed tutorials

Well, now that I'm back online, it looks like this week is just a blogging bonanza!...

Scott links to Rivkah's blog instruction series on Paneling, Pacing, and Layout in Comics and Manga. It's broken up into a couple parts:

Part One
Part Two
(It looks like one more part is on the way. I'll update as accordingly)

These essays are very praxis-oriented theory, but still very interesting. I'm always curious about the intersection between praxis and (cognitive) theory, and actually think there is a fair amount of overlap. Praxis oriented instruction talk about how best to guide the intuitions, while structural theory seeks to probe those intuitions for their underlying rules. Hopefully we'll reach a point where a foundation of structural work is established so we can actually see where it and praxis meet up.

There's also a discussion about the usefulness of such tutorials that I've found interesting for its underlying motivating content of the Art vs. Language divide – individuality and "anti-copying" versus conventionality.

As insinuated by the above statement, my take on tutorials is similar to language classes. If you are a native English speaker, English classes help you hone your intuitions to become a better writer. If you don't speak the language already, language classes actually teach you to acquire the structure to begin with. These "visual language tutorials" are similar – they can either help improve your graphic writing, or lead towards getting graphic fluency in the first place.

Not Just Perception

So, it seems this Art vs. Language/Iconic Bias stuff is on the brain these days…

A great deal of research on "art" or looking at drawings has been situated in Perception studies of psychology, and I've on occasion bumped heads with various who have taken this track. Perception, as it pertains to visual things, studies how it is people's vision works: the psychology of vision. I can understand how it might fit with visual language studies, and it does, but only to the same extant that studies of hearing fit with spoken language.

This issue is related to the Veil of Iconicity issues that I've been writing about lately. Thinking that drawings should be situated in Perception fails to recognize that they can form their own system of communication, rather than simply being a router for the perceptual activity of vision.

Rather, my visual language theories seek to recognize that drawings are different. Drawings are not just "visual material" that is seen like everything else in the world (ahem, though the aparatus of vision might treat it the same). Drawings come from the mind, they are conceptual representations, and as such can't just be lumped in with all perceptual things that don't come from the mind without some distinction. Just like words in a language, they are part of a code. It just happens that this code often looks like what it means.

Iconic Bias, Part 3

So, last post I talked about how criticism of certain drawing styles stems from the fact that critics might speak a different dialect of visual language. The Art Perspective would have trouble recognizing the idea of graphic dialects because it sees drawing as a siphon for drawing "real life," which leads to the second reason why people might deride certain styles:

Reason 2: They see an issue of skill, not fluency

Rather than seeing graphic ability as a proficiency in a set of communal standards (fluency), people regard drawing as a "skill" that people are "better" or "worse" at. In the Art view, this skill is often determined by how accurate real proportions are held up. Judging representations based on iconicity gives an "objective" basis for claims of value.

Granted, the communal signs of the visual language community may not be prevalent as standardized signs like in spoken language (largely due to the forces brought this Art Perspective). However, within an individual author's style, they have consistencies and patterns. But, you really can just tell when someone is or isn't fluent, based on your own fluency.

I should also note "fluency" makes no judgment about the nature of the content. It purely has to do with reaching a certain degree of proficiency with drawing. Indeed, there are several very popular comics both on the web and not that are very well written and have great content, yet I'd say that their authors are less than wholly graphically fluent.

The fact of the matter is that Liefeld is undeniably graphically fluent: he has internally consistent and patterned ways of drawing and does so to a high degree of proficiency within that style. Sure, his proportions and anatomy may not be accurate to "real life," but this is only an issue if you believe that drawings should match real life, as opposed to patterned mental structures.

Aside from the issue of fluency levels, it is these same issues that lead people to think that certain drawings might be more "primitive" than others, like Egyptian drawings or cave paintings. Appealing to iconicity lets there be a scale of "progress" relating different styles to each other (like the notion "we've progressed so much in drawing since those old days"). Systems using point perspective and shading are believed to be "superior" to those that are flat or fixed to a certain angle-of-viewpoint, because the former is more iconic. A Language view doesn't allow this: all systems are equal, only they do things in different ways.

And finally, a thought to sum up the way that Art can (and does) fit with a Language view: Language (including visual language) is what a structure is, Art is what you can do with it.

Iconic Bias, Part 2

As I discussed in my previous post, there is an Art Perspective belief that people should learn to draw from "real life" and not from copying others. In that post, I tried to tease out some of the underlying assumptions of this belief. Here, I'd like to point out how it leads to derision of other approaches (as demonstrated in the quotes from the last posts).

(Caveat: Just to be clear, and to avoid misperceptions, I don't have a problem with people drawing realistically. I'm just trying to examine the underlying assumptions that motivate perceptions of drawing. And, I should also add, that I too am a product of the culture of Iconic Bias, as it did and still does inform many of my graphic decisions.)

There are two reasons those who hold this Iconic Bias might think that certain styles, like say Rob Liefeld's drawings or the manga style, are substandard:

Reason 1: They speak a different graphic language/dialect

People will rag on certain styles mainly because they belong to a different graphic dialect. People who aren't comfortable with the early 90s Image style or manga style (or many others) as their visual language end up making fun of it or calling it substandard. This is similar to the treatment of African American Vernacular English (popularly known as Ebonics) in America. Some speakers of Standard English end up thinking that speakers of African American Vernacular English are somehow stupid or have less skill in language, when really the fact is that they speak a different dialect of English that has its own patterns and consistencies. It's not "lesser" its just different.

Of course, the Iconic Bias has an easy time making these judgments, because it doesn't allow for there to even be such a notion as graphic dialects: drawings are valued on their relations to "real life perception," not mental patterns. The sheer recognition of drawing styles as cohesive systems runs against the free-for-all in how "each individual interprets real life."

More coming in the next post…

Iconic Bias, Part 1.5

Here's another subtle example of this Iconic Bias that I discussed in my earlier post. From a recent new interview with Scott McCloud, the interviewer asked:

"What’s hard for you to draw?"

Can you see the subtle bias here? Give it some thought…

It assumes that the capacity for drawing is about "drawing things in the world" — and drawing them as their supposed to look — as opposed to drawing being a capacity for expressing concepts, which just happen to look like things out "in the world." Let me rephrase the question: "What [things out there in the world are] hard for you to draw?"

In contrast to a Language approach, imagine asking someone, "What words are hard for you to pronounce?" Scott's answer is also illustrative, because it invokes the need for reference photos, tied to that same perspective (if its not in the mind, I need to reference "out there in the world").

Snark I can't hold back: Why is this question even there? I mean, really, this is Scott McCloud, the guy who ushered in deep thinking about comics. You really want to waste a question asking him what he doesn't draw well? Puh-lease.

OK, I swear, next post on this I'll get into some of the results of this Iconic Bias.

Iconic Bias, Part 1

I've tried to point out in some of my writings that there is an "Art" perspective that dominates the usage of graphic creation in our culture. Its primary emphasis is for innovation and individuality in styles in contrast to a "Language" perspective that seems communality and shared signs.

Regarding learning, the "Art" view has two emphases:

1. Developing one's own style apart from everyone else (i.e. "don't copy other people's drawings")
2. Learning to draw by imitating real life

I'd like to take aim at #2 in this post, since I think that it carries more assumptions with regard to it. #1 may be something that is emphasized, but its hard not to get influenced by other sources anyways, and the prevalence of "house styles" (Marvel house style, etc) or "cultural styles" (manga style) easily shows how group consistency does happen. Of course the assumptions under #2 motivate the "anti-style" tendencies of #1 as well.

The basic assumption underlying #2, that people should learn to draw by imitating real life, is related to what I call the "Veil of Iconicity." This outlook treats graphic creation (drawing) as something that is not rooted conceptually. The graphic form is merely a siphon through which "real" (looking) things are represented. And, if not done directly through "life drawing," then that mode is what should at least inform a person's drawing "from their imagination".

Now, several people have tried to tell me that "drawing from life" is no longer an emphasis of Art, but I've found these quotes recently on a variety of comic message boards:

"I hate manga/anime. You know why? They are all hacks. It doesn't take any talent to draw round heads and big eyes. It takes a lot of skill to draw accurately proportioned figures that are anatomically correct (traditional line art)."

"Comic books, whether drawn by pinheads like Liefeld or superb artisans like Gil Kane, are a terrible training ground for drawing - even if you intend to learn how to draw comics. All you're picking up the the graphic shorthand the artist has developed to represent figures and environments so he can draw from his imagination. It's always a stylistic distortion, a poor substitute for life drawing or copying photos."

"...photos will build your skills a lot better than copying someone else's ink lines."

This is exactly the Art perspective I'm talking about.

Again, this perspective leaves out the role of the mind in relation to drawing. Patterned ways of drawing, as stored in long-term memory (your "imagination," as if it were a bad thing), are made to seem less valid than just rerouting perception through the graphic form. Sure, by definition an "iconic" sign "gets its meaning by resembling what it represents." However, that doesn't mean that such signs must exhibit this to the maximal degree, all the time (if at all), and without accepting that such signs must come from the human mind.

I'll continue this with the next post, delving more into some of the results of this belief.

Art v. Language

The debate rages on over at Comixpedia. Despite the baseless personal attacks against me and totally mischaracterization of my positions, I'm grateful for the help its lent in clarifying my ideas. I think that my articulation of the "Art vs. Language" issue was done clearer than I've ever done before, so I'm reposting it here:

I believe that the mentality of conventionality for creating graphic images is actually the predisposed nature for ALL humans. The cognitive preference for everybody is for imitation. The human mind is a pattern receiving/making machine, whether you're Japanese, American, Arrernte, Warlpiri, French, Chinese, Somalian... whatever.

The "cultural force" I speak of (that I call "Art") works against that natural inclination for conventionality that is naturally wired into all people by insisting on individuality of drawing style. The evidence that this influence exists is right in the quandry from the very first post of this thread, which is why I commented on it.

A community is a collection of individuals. Each of those individuals responds to the balance between conventionality and the Art pespective in different ways (probably more like a gradient, but discrete here for clarity):

1. Some use conventionality to a maximal degree and don't care about individuality at all (though as a unique individual mind there is always some degree of individuality).
2. Some embrace conventionality to a high degree and mark out their individuality in small and fine-grained ways.
3. Others make huge breaks with conventionality to create styles that hardly look like any other person or group at all.

Cultures are created by the collection of these communities composed of individuals. Various communities and cultures respond to all of the things I've described above in different ways, based on the choices the individuals make in response to the stimuli around them (both graphic stimuli and community attitudes). Some may respond more like #1, some may do more like #2, and some more like #3. These responses happen in all cultures, distributed in different ways: in America, in Japan, in Australia, in France... all of them. In no culture will every single person follow any one type of tendency, so long as the influence of Art is present in that culture (which is just about everywhere at this point).

Comixpederific!

This thread over at Comixpedia is worth checking out, which has turned into quite a heated discussion. I've mainly been discussing my Art versus Language perspectives regarding Japanese and American styles, to varying responses. I'm actually fairly grateful for the discussion and opposition to my ideas, since I've been working on some writing that pertains exactly to this topic. Nothing like a good argument to clarify my positions better.

I also think that discussions like thish are a good testament to the success of Comixpedia's site redesign. I think it allows for threaded discussions like this far better than the old one, and community stuff like this is always good.

And while I'm on the subject, I'll just throw out that I have another piece coming soon for Comixpedia... this time a little different than what I usually do... stay tuned!

Aside: Today's update of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is now online.

Naming the System

I've been thinking lately about the differences between "visual language" and "comics", and why no one has really made the separation between the