Different ways of playing

From playing piano, I've identified five different possible sources for what your fingers are doing on the keys.

1. If you're reading music, your eyes are telling your fingers what to do.

2. If you're improvising, your ears are doing it.

3. If you're playing exercises, it's your brain.

4. If you're playing a song from memory, it's also your brain, but a different function, plus some muscle memory

5. And the fifth one, after years of playing, I only noticed this week. Your fingers can direct themselves, based on what feels good for your fingers, with total indifference to the notes.

From Ran Prieur’s 089.
As someone who draws frequently, I've been thinking about the equivalents for visual art. I've definitely noticed a stark difference in my ability to draw from a reference, versus simply drawing without. ¹⁰ Here is what I see:

1. Drawing from reference is like drawing from eyes, and fingers follow
2. Basic drawing exercises, like drawing circles, ellipses, straight lines, are pure muscle memory
3. Drawing without reference is something I haven't figured out yet so I can't say what exactly is going on. My attempts consist of me trying to imagine something in my head and adjusting as I go through the drawing, so it's a combination of mental visualization and using my eyes to see how I like what I’ve made so far
4. Improvisational drawing is also about letting your fingers flow around, as he mentions in the last example. It's a very freeing exercise in fact because you don't really know what emerges, and you're not bound to any kind of expectation, so I would highly recommend to any artist who feels stuck

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2024-08-25