06/15/2026
Three Lines
Don't forget to use your soft eyes! Ok so I'm editing this.. I've taught it to my kids, some of my siblings and others at apropos moments. I came to this term while playing Aikido and sensei said "I want you to look at the far side of the dojo and keep your gaze there while you 'see' everything in your field of vision. You don't need to move your focus you need to take in the whole area in your attention. Now I want you to walk thoroughly through the group as everyone else walks about. Focus on no one but bump into no one. You will see everyone moving about and I want you to fluidly move about walking into no one." This is how as a sculptor I see my work develop. This is also as a painter how I develop my pieces. Feel all the options of mass, line, color, negative space, juxtaposition, compression, limits etc. but focus on nothing and watch the piece form. Buckminister Fuller said once at art school "when I was a child I had really poor vision and until I got glasses not knowing I was seeing poorly, all I could see was large shapes and it established my pattern to think in the big picture first". Wow that really affected me (me not Fuller)! Then at the dojo I was hit with the same concept. Always always step back and see the big picture first to study the parts. In the drawing below initially I only saw three lines and thought oh they're nice, a couple of vertical curves and then a diagonal curvy connecting line, cool. Then my training said hey dummy slow down, back up, soft eyes!
Ohh, bottom - breast - woman's form.
I don't know who drew this but thank you very much.
