Introduction
Curiously, some of our evolutionary traits that make us homo sapien also sabotage our potential in art, particularly in equine realism. This means that besides skill-building and developing our knowledge base, we also have hardwired obstacles to tackle. How interesting that the trickiest challenges aren't about training or resources, but what originates inside our own heads!
Now as we’ve discussed some time ago, the most powerful hardwired trait is our perception, that filter that interprets reality. As important as it is though, our perception is subjective, not objective. Indeed, everyone perceives reality differently and, since it's the interface between ourselves and the world, it colors everything we think, feel, reason, and assume with our own unique take on things. And because it's an individually–customized, conflict of interest feedback loop, it intrinsically does so without us ever realizing it. We simply believe our interpretations and sensibilities to be self–evident and absolute. But that's not necessarily true! We may have it very wrong! But only by understanding our perception's foibles can we begin to circumvent this unhelpful influence.
And a big part of our perception’s superpowers is something called the Pattern Recognition Response (PRR). This is a particularly sneaky facet of our perception which literally helps to filter everything incoming and outgoing, and being so all-encompassing, will influence everything we absorb and translate into our clay or pigment. This means that it can cause skews right under our radar, contributing to our blindspots, plateaus, biases, and tastes, even our artistic style. As such, the believability of our work depends a lot on our ability to manipulate our PRR in order to tease out evermore truthful patterns. So let’s talk about it!…
The Pattern Recognition Response
The human brain is supremely evolved to find and establish patterns. When we get right down to it, pattern recognition is what we do best. Some would even argue that all human behavior and brain processing can be explained by this simple mechanism alone.
Indeed, pattern recognition is such a part of what we are that it insinuates itself into everything we do. Language is a learned pattern of communication, for example. Identifying objects, family and friends requires pattern recognition as well. This trait even compels us to fancifully see things in random objects (like bunnies in clouds), and influences simple pleasures like music. What's music but a series of formalized, pleasing sound patterns? No wonder our brain finds it so appealing!
But even our habits come down to patterns—patterns of behavior and assumptions. How we reason and rationalize come down to patterned behavior, too, those shaped by triggers unique to our individual nature and nurture. Even the consumer choices we make come down to pattern processing, from identifying a familiar brand to researching which product to buy. Really, what are product reviews but a pattern of performance?
In the big picture, our cultures and societal functioning all come down to formalized patterns as well. What's a tradition? Merely an institutionalized pattern of collective behavior. In the even bigger picture, physics and the function of the Universe are dictated by patterns, those established by natural forces.
Life is really like one big outrageously complicated patterned tapestry. How clever of our brains to have keyed on this fundamental constant of life! What's especially curious about all this is that our grey cells are so hell–bent on pattern recognition, that they’ll make forced associations to establish a pattern no matter how meager the correlation. Heck, our brain will even fabricate them where none exist, without us ever realizing it. This is how we create superstitions, for instance, or the belief in a "lucky streak" in gambling, or pseudo-science. It’s also where we get our conspiracy theories and logic fallacies.
What does this mean? That our brain demands a pattern to make sense of any given situation. So we not only have to contend with a subjective interpretation of reality then, we also have to deal with our brain’s insistence on patterns, even made up ones. Between the two of them then lies ample opportunity to skew our interpretations right off the map. Is it any wonder why beginners have such a hard time learning this art form? Is it any wonder why making progress at any point can be such a challenge?
So what does pattern recognition have to do with realistic equine sculpture? A whole heckuva lot! On one hand, success depends in part on our ability to recognize and apply accurate biological patterns. But taking our work to the next level depends entirely on our ability to manipulate this process. Said another way, it's not enough to recognize the biological patterns, we must also recognize how and when to tweak them, and why.
What for? Well, what are anatomy and biomechanics? They're just life’s biological patterns, aren’t they? They're so consistent, in fact, that paleontologists use them to deduce the niche and physical capabilities of long–extinct animals. Just take a look at Linnaean taxonomy. There's a system of categorization based entirely on biological patterns.
Coming back to equine realism then, anatomy charts and descriptions are merely codified expressions of the biological pattern for Equus, the blueprint pattern, with each equine species having its own unique variation. In this context, age and gender differences are just modified biological patterns derived from the master pattern. More still, breed, conformation and type are merely a series of institutionalized patterns layered onto the Equus pattern. And individual variation is simply another layer of modification of the equine pattern.
Even what we apply to our clay or paint is based on pattern recognition. For example, how we design a sculpture, from the flick of an ear to the orientation of bones and musculature, is guided by those patterns we perceive in life. What’s more, our methods, artistic style, and the materials we use are all based on patterns, a force of habit. Indeed, what’s a habit but a behavioral pattern? As for life study and workshops then, what we’re really doing is learning to refine preexisting patterns or learn new patterns entirely. Learning to sculpt or paint better is simply an incidental by-product.
This is why we learn most when we "get out of our brain's way," allowing it to absorb, absorb, absorb new patterns without preconceived notions. The moment we stick prejudgment into a workshop setting, for instance, we cram a monkey wrench into the whole experience. Indeed, when we're doing it right, doesn't our brain spin for hours after the class? This is because our grey cells not only adore discovering new patterns, they go bananas over processing them even more. They'll do it for hours. Days. Months even. While we're asleep! They'll even tuck some away for future revelations, when they can go bananas all over again—that’s our subroutines working.
All this in mind, accurate equine realism simply entails recognizing the necessary patterns, right? That once we establish a diligent habit that recreates these authentic patterns, we'll automatically create more realistic work by default, yes? If it's pretty much like assembling IKEA furniture out of a box...hey, we got it made!
Well, not really.
The Big Problem with Pattern Recognition
Yes, anatomical patterns are recipe–like, within the grasp of anyone determined enough to learn them. And, yes, they're teachable, able to be broken down into bite–size pieces. But as any experienced sculptor knows—only to a point. And this point pops up far quicker than we may realize.
That's the important bit. This point of no return sneaks past all of us when we aren't looking, when the pattern ceases to be a guide and becomes a habit, a formula, even a contrivance. From this moment on, we're sculpting-by-numbers or painting-by-numbers rather than from life, with the formula becoming the only interpretation that looks right to us. Quite literally, our brain becomes so infatuated with that pattern, it can't See anything else. This is exactly where our artistic style is developed but also where our blindspots, plateaus, and biases reside. Clearly then, learning to manipulate our PRR is a key for empowered progress by continually ferreting out these skews. Learn to tweak it at will then, and we can take our work to the next level at any time. Because what’s progress but dumping old obsolete patterns for newer more accurate ones?
Even so, all this is an unavoidable phenomenon because it's part of learning the correct pattern in the first place. We gotta learn the correct patterns, the rules, as best we can before we can learn how to tweak them. This is why we’ll hear in art circles that we have to learn how to paint or sculpt “tight” before we can “loosen” well. We have to know the rules to know how to tork them, don't we? Being so, we only get into trouble if we stop in the “tight” phase, or the formulaic approach rather than loosening to better duplicate organic reality. For instance, our sculptures can become more like anatomical paper dolls, lacking all the happenstance, physics, and diversity Nature presents us moment by moment with the living body.
Not that a sculpt-by-numbers or paint-by-numbers approach doesn't work—it certainly can result in beautiful pieces! But we also can’t ignore that it results in an inevitable homogenous body of work where it appears the same ruleset was used to carve in the formula regardless of the circumstances depicted. For instance, we cannot forget that those anatomy charts we depend on so much aren’t infallible nor are they gospel. They have critical flaws we must be aware of if they’re going to guide us in the best way, without holding us back or steering us in the wrong direction.
And that’s just it — if we allow our PRR to get the better of us, it’s going to start dictating a skewed reality, enforcing the same formula across the board. Our PRR also tends to double down to exaggerate its preferred patterns to a point well beyond what we find in life. This is exactly how some pieces can become so caricatured or stylized, they cease to be realistic. This is fine if that’s our goal, but if our aim is otherwise, we have some work to do.
Is Pattern Recognition Cut and Dry?
All that said, leaning into a pattern isn't a bad thing per se. Indeed, connecting the anatomical dots, plotting the pattern for the bones, joints, musculature and whatnot, is a sound strategy for creating and articulating an armature, for instance. Really, what better way to create something recognizable as a horse, mule, or onager from the onset? This is precisely why the more faithfully we connect the various dots throughout the process, the more technically accurate our sculptures become. The same can be said for paintwork, too. For example, each color has its own dappling pattern, some of which can change through the seasons to boot, and we need to ping these patterns if we hope to have our paintjobs ring true. Likewise, each color has its own characteristic hue, its own pattern of color use, which we need to zero in on for our coat colors to read accurately. So a pattern certainly makes for a very handy guide.
Even so, taking our work to the next level requires we go beyond this point. This is because the dots we're connecting belong to an organic, living creature who doesn’t care one iota about our preferred patterns. Sure, we may find our patterns comfortable, familiar, safe, attractive, even successful, but real life just doesn't care about any of that. So should we? And there it is. If our formula works and people like it, and, more importantly, if we like it, what's the point of breaking from a successful pattern? This is the pivotal question we come to if we're practicing our art with sincerity.
The answer is a personal decision and one we come to in our own time. But before we make it, we should know a couple of things. First, our answer, "forever will it dominate your destiny," as Yoda would say. And there are trade-offs for the safety and comfort of our habitual patterns. For one, artistic plateaus await us and, for another, we risk entrenching into our blindspots, even those that compound. We may also bang out predictable work that may not be as faithful to life if we could See otherwise.
And second, whatever satisfaction we derive from our formula, we should recognize that there's a difference between technical accuracy and living accuracy. To understand why, we're asked to identify when our point of no return occurred, determine why it occurred, how we want to reorient our direction, and then consciously lift our sensibilities out of the habitual formulas that got us there. As we advance then, we essentially become more courageous. Since each individual animal and discreet moment is—by definition—a unique variation of the pattern, we realize our sculptures and paintjobs can be as well, and so it's okay to release our grip on our safety blankets. So if we want to strive for our true potential, we're obliged to let go of those things that feel safe, reliable, and tested and stretch further into the unknown with riskier choices.
The reason for this is that any pattern we cannot perceive is actually a bigger influence in our work that those we can, which is why we'll make technical mistakes totally unawares. That’s to say we simply don't See our habitual patterns as flawed — that’s what makes them habitual. But the truth is we can only begin to trust any patterns we are recognizing when we learn to increasingly tease out our biases, plateaus, and blindspots to make proactive and intentional judgment calls about them.
But this isn’t easy. It’s actually a kinda Catch-22 because we’re operating within a conflict of interest loop of our perception and PRR. Honestly then, it's really our core struggle in equine realism. To grasp just how tricky it is then, we first have to understand seven inherent obstacles with our PRR:
- Our brain will automatically and immediately begin to pattern recognize the moment it processes something.
- We cannot prevent our brain from doing so, or from acting on those patterns. It's a hardwired response, just like breathing or balance control. This means we have to intervene the moment it starts.
- Our brain's ability to pattern recognize is determined by the acuity of our perception.
- Our brain will convince us that the patterns it does recognize are absolutely reliable and immutable.
- We can never duplicate life's patterns in absolute faithfulness due to the very nature of creating art since we are fallible human beings and not Nature. However, our brain will relentlessly attempt to convince us otherwise.
- Nature is as much about chaos as it is about order, and so relying too heavily on orderly, static patterns will invariably cause our work to fall short as an expression of organic life.
- Our PPR is highly vulnerable to social pressure and conditioning, meaning that our ability to pattern recognize can be influenced, even manipulated by external pressures.
Add all that up and it's evident how trouble awaits us when we assume realism is just a matter of duplicating the patterns we see. Our course of action for real progress then becomes circumventing these obstacles, so let's chat about them a bit more.
Starting with #1, our brain is processing patterns all the time, even while we're sleeping. It's so eager to do this, it's even anticipating them. Ever anxious for lunch hour? There ya go. It's so positively pattern–happy, that if it cannot find patterns, it will contrive them just to make itself happier. In some ways, this is what art actually is, merely the brain entertaining itself with self–generated patterns it finds pleasing.
Now if a pattern appears obvious, or repeats with enough predictability, our brain is so thrilled, it cements that pattern into a kind of truth, a rule. Indeed, our brain lives for this—every little grey cell anxious for this very moment. We call it "learning." For us this means the moment we practice our craft—when we even think about it—our brain promptly gets to work, busily directing our hands according to those patterns it recognizes as rules. It wants to always apply what it has learned. The point to understand here is that, as artists, some of these rules may be inconsistent with reality. Thanks to any deficiencies in our perception, our ability to recognize patterns is distorted in kind. We'll get to that in #3.
In addition to that, it also means our brain is likely to pounce on anything that appears consistent and translate it as fact. This isn't always the case in life, however, especially when it comes to the “living moment” or aspects of the equine influenced to human action. For instance, the way fads influence riding styles demonstrates how consistency doesn't always equate to correct. Rollkur is an example. So after our brain settles down from its enthusiastic assumption, we must challenge it further by asking, "why?" It's in the "why" where we must make a value judgment, and so it’s a critical first response. Indeed, it's rarely a good idea to accept a pattern at face value, especially in this art form and with a subject that exists within a sketchy social contract.
Nonetheless, the upside is that learning makes our brain immensely happy and keeps it primed for more. Truly, the more it learns, the better learner it becomes. So give it new patterns to chew on! You'll make your brain super happy and you'll find new satisfaction in the studio, and that spells one thing—better work.
Now we come to #2. We should understand that pattern recognition is an instinctive response. It's automatic and instantaneous. We cannot will our brain to stop any more than will our body to stop metabolizing. For example, when an angry dog lunges at us, what's our first response? Yes—to recoil back. Our brain's ability to pattern recognize and act is so hardwired, we literally cannot think fast enough to stop it from happening. Consequently, our only recourse is to manage it after the fact while not stoking its fires at the same time. So how do we do this? Well, here are some tactics we can apply to do just that…
- Learn how to sculpt or paint without thinking about patterns. Come to each life study moment and each piece with as few expectations and assumptions as possible. When we envision a horse, for instance, try to avoid a fixation on anatomical organization. Rather, try to abstract the subject into very simple lines, shapes, and curves that capture the essence of the subject in the moment rather than the anatomy. Above all, stop thinking about anatomy charts. While smart to do when training our perception as beginners, weaning ourselves from them as we advance helps to retrain our perception to better zero in on those fleeting moments of change. When we stop working so hard to contrive the subject, when we stop organizing them into familiar patterns, to instead just look at what's there without prejudgment, we begin to better perceive how the master pattern changes in each fleeting moment. We better see how it's an untidy, organic, living entity, not something formulaic and neat, like a static illustration. Because here’s the thing: Once we fully grasp the pattern, it’s time to work beyond it and we do that by using the chart as a guide rather than as confining dogma.
- Use artistic tricks to snap our brain away from its preferred, most comfortable patterns. Our brain latches onto its favorite patterns because they're safe and familiar, not necessarily because they're correct. And yes, these patterns may have been successful thus far, so why not repeat them? But the problem is this makes our brain complacent, over–confident and worse, tending to entrench in its blindspots. Honestly, our creative sensibilities need a good shakedown every so often. So consider sculpting upside down, using anatomy charts and references upside down as well. We can use a hand mirror to "reverse" our sculpture during the process, too, to jar our brain away from its familiar view. We can take a photo of our piece and, along with our references, reverse the colors in Photoshop to see everything in a whole new way. We may even pick up on patterns previously unrecognized! And it can be as simple as this pledge: "I shall not repeat myself—I will find new ways to express anatomy, color, or technique on this piece that I haven't explored before, no matter how odd or challenging it appears to me.” Granted though, it'll take a bit of mental work as our brain is truly infatuated with its safe patterns, like a rattie grasping onto a yogie treat, but work on it with intent and it’s doable.
- Actively find ways to break any pattern we employ. Because our brain regards familiar patterns as safe and absolute, it'll unconsciously initiate them if we aren't consciously working to countermand them. For instance, the second we start blocking in the familiar muscle groups, we should stop and question ourselves. Why are we doing things the same way? How can we do it differently? What are my references really telling me that’s different from what I assume? Because here’s the deal: We should be exploring how to tweak these patterns with equal enthusiasm as we have in getting them right. Why? Well, more often than not, how the pattern becomes different is more pivotal than how it remains the same. So the moment we start thinking, "Yes, that's what it should look like," is the moment we need to stop and reevaluate why. The thing is though, this determination is based entirely on our recognized patterns. In short, "what looks right" is a judgment born largely of habit. Are we sure our perception is allowing us to See the patterns accurately? Are we sure we're Seeing all the new patterns? How can we prove it to ourselves? Remember, what we cannot See has more influence in our work than what we can!
- Make sure all this doesn't go sideways. This is in reference to that "stoking the fires” comment. In our management, we need to be careful about retriggering our PRR when we attempt to work beyond it. Remember, our brain will contrive patterns where none exist so we have to manipulate this tendency, too. A classic example is sculpting manes and tails—in our attempt to mimic the passive physics of moving hair, we inadvertently create a larger overall pattern that can look too orderly or contrived. So we need to stay open to what our references and life study are really showing us and work to mimic all that with a looser grip on our own patterns.
All together these tactics train our PRR to work for us rather than against us, getting us stuck. In essence then, these tricks make our PRR more responsive to life’s little happenstances and those who practice them find a new ability to perceive new patterns with ease, lending diversity and the “living moment" to their portfolio.
So getting to #3, because our perception directly governs our PRR, all our assumptions, beliefs, judgments, and actions we apply to our pieces are suspect. My friend, Lesli Kathman, wrote a really interesting post on her blog, The Equine Tapestry, touching on this very issue. Specifically, this statement is illustrative:
You’d be surprised how often breed type can override your eye when it comes to spotting similarities (or differences) in patterns. Transferring the pattern over to a different body type can force you to really see things. That’s one reason why the illustrations in the book are on generic horse shapes rather than ones specific to the breed or type being discussed.
And the same applies to realistic equine sculpture. The worrisome thing about creating equine realism is that we literally cannot trust our own Eye, no matter how well-schooled, experienced, or successful we are. With every sculpture or paint job, we must prove to ourselves that our perception is credible enough to warrant a goodly measure of our trust, however the complication is, “what looks right” isn't sufficient proof. Remember what we cannot See is more influential in our work than what we can. Because perception governs pattern recognition, we only key in on those patterns we perceive. From this perspective, deepening our perception can be thought of as recognizing and implementing new, previously unSeen patterns. This is literally how we “learn” to sculpt or paint more realistically. So it’s not just our skillset that improves or even our knowledge base—it’s how we’ve willfully tweaked our perception to better open up our PRR to pick up on fresh new patterns from life.
Now to #4—Our brain’s fixation on its favored patterns will actually create an enthusiastic, little Yes Man in our heads. This is both good and bad, depending how we manage it. To help us understand why, remember that pattern recognition is a learning mechanism evolved for survival, and in progressively better ways. Simply speaking, those ancestors who couldn't instantly connect claws, teeth, and growls with "gruesome, gut–spewing shrieking death" just didn't pass on their genes. Similarly, those who couldn't predict the seasons or animal migrations probably starved to death, or those who couldn't connect the cause and effect of making better fires, tools, weapons, shelters, or clothing probably where hosed in the survival department. Even more sophisticated, those who predicted the social patterns of a culture advanced even faster. It's that sort of thing. Our ability to recognize and learn from patterns is essential not just for this art form then, but for our daily lives as well. It's what we do best.
This is why our brain is alarmingly eager to latch onto any pattern it finds as irrefutable truth—it must. Six million years of human evolution has designed it so, and for very good reason. To follow through on the deal then, our brain works ceaselessly to convince us that an irrefutable pattern most likely applies to all respective situations as well. It must. Better safe than sorry, right? If a bush rustles, for example, we spook instinctively, don't we? (Just like a horse.) This is because we don't know whether it may be a tiger or a bunny doing that rustling until we pause after the fact and think, "Wait a minute." What this means is that our established patterns are real to us by default and applicable to every situation until proven otherwise. Is it clear then how this applies to realistic equine art? Because our Yes Man compels us to apply our patterns across the board, it's not a natural tendency to always countermand them with a "wait a minute." Yet this is the precise response needed while we sculpt or paint. We’ve got to implement a check and balance system for our PRR if we ever hope to create more realistic, organic work.
Regardless, our Yes Man is so entrenched, it still can be pretty tough to let go of our perceived irrefutable facts even when presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Flat Earthers are still around, for example, and doomsday cults persist despite their predictions face-planting every single time. And each of us—at some point—refused to believe actual fact as a first reaction in lieu of our more precious perceived truth. That's not because we're stupid. It's because we're hardwired to do so. Remember our perception protects itself and this is just part of that defensive strategy.
So trying to stop our Yes Man from yapping in our ear isn't going to work. Instead, we need to initiate the new habit of "wait a minute" to put it to better work. We need for it to start proving itself, an extremely useful habit to adopt in equine realism, for this reason...
Now it’s time for #5, "We can never duplicate life's patterns in absolute faithfulness due to the very nature of creating art—we are fallible human beings and not Nature." No matter how hard we try, what training we've had, or how many critiques we engage, we cannot create a truly technically perfect depiction of an equine—only Nature can do that. Perfection in our work is simply a pipe dream, a delusional impossibility—always. Indeed, no matter how “perfect” a piece seems to be, it still will always have hiccups. We’re human after all. What’s more, no matter how vigorously we attend to our perception or PRR, our style, value judgments, blindspots, plateaus, biases, and aesthetics seep into our work. Said another way, the very nature of creating art lends artistic interest to an otherwise clinical art form—which is brilliant!
So what's the point of the art form then? All said and done, perhaps it's learning how to gain conscious control of our craft in order to make thoughtful and informed choices to not only be better artists who can create work that better connects with others, but to be better advocates as well. If we gear our training to this one goal, better, deeper work and a more meaningful understanding are the natural by-products. Why? Because we’ll really have to dig deep into the subject and ourselves to create more authentically. Again, it's the pursuit, the Path we're asked to follow that amplifies the meaning in this art form which could so easily become as inert as an anatomical diagram.
Now coming to #6: "Nature is as much about chaos as it is about order…” And there it is. The crux of the entire issue between our PRR and equine realism: Our chosen art form is based on both order and chaos, because life is too. On one hand then—yes—anatomy and color do have rules, but they also have “organic chaos,” either the effect of the “living moment” on structure, or the genetic “luck of the draw” with color (or even nutritional, age related, grooming, conditioning, shedding, or seasonal changes, among others). And in many cases, these can scramble the expected patterns a lot, and in very surprising ways. Yet our brains work ceaselessly to find and enforce order. We exist in a constant tug of war between organic Nature and what our brains want it to be. Uffdah.
However, given the nature of equine realism, it's no surprise why this core idea is the most easily forgotten. When we're trying to convey such a complicated, seemingly incomprehensible fleshy, colorful mass that is the equine, the tidy patterns depicted in anatomical diagrams, conformation tenets, and color charts are just too irresistible for our PRR. They're what a grain bucket is to a horse! And this is exactly where the trap gets set. The truth is that despite the orderly patterns illustrated in so many references, the living body and “living moment” are anything but.
So this tug of war poses critical questions for our artistic choices. For one, it brings into sharp focus our over-dependence on anatomy charts versus our good references and life study. For another, it begs the question of developing our Eye to See “organic chaos” in equal measure with the biological patterns. It also calls into question what is correct to our Eye versus what is actually realistic, or what is safe to our Eye versus what is challenging. And it begs the issue of our artistic style and how it may either benefit our art or become a liability. But just as much, it questions how hard we’re willing to apply ourselves to shake loose from our habitual, safe patterns. Here's the thing—grasping the static pattern, the formula, is the easy part. It just takes training and diligence, just like any skill. But being the easy part, it can make us complacent. Sculpting-by-numbers or painting-by-numbers is simple enough, just like cooking from a recipe. Plus, cranking out the pattern reasonably well is more or less recognizable as "accurate" to many people. The average person can do a pretty good job differentiating a more realistic equine sculpture from a lesser one if the right buttons are pushed. But it’s when we get to the situations that require a more sophisticated Eye that perceives nature’s chaos where things get sticky—and where an artist's gumption really shows. This is because it takes far more courage and a punk rock attitude to sculpt beyond our safe patterns since it is—all said and done—a risk. In this sense then, working beyond a static PRR indicates genuinely advanced skills. Indeed, it’s not how well we duplicate the patterns repeatedly that speaks of our mastery—it's how well we tweak them! Indeed, savvy realistic sculpture or paintwork isn't just about what's similar, it's even more about what's different. Like if our series or body of work looks homogenous, what are we missing in our analysis?
This brings us to #7, "our ability to pattern recognize can be manipulated by outside influences.” What we perceive as true is shaped both by our nature and our nurture. This is how our upbringing and cultural layers help to shape our beliefs, assumptions, and actions. So because our perceptions are chiseled by social pressures, so are those patterns we recognize. Just consider for a moment how conformational tenets have shaped our art form, even when some have been proven wrong by science. The long toe-low heel trim is a classic example. Also observe how the Quarter Horse and Arabian halter horses have been so dramatically shifted away from function and towards aesthetics, creating new harmful patterns of body type due to show ring pressures. So artist, beware. Likewise, take care not to fall into the trap of all the fads in our art form because not all of them are truly aligned with reality. For instance, there was that streaky sabino pattern fad that burned its way through our arts some years ago. Always take a stronger cue from the real deal rather than what other artists are doing because remember, they're working within their own problematic PRR as well.
Regimentation
There’s more though, of course: Our own patterns can often trap us. How curious that those very aspects of our process we tend to rely on most have the greatest potential to stifle our growth! A classic example of this phenomenon is regimentation in our work, something that pops up both in sculpture and especially in paintwork.
What’s regimentation? Well, it’s when our hand falls into an unconscious pattern of doing something repetitive like ticking, lacy effects, dappling, wrinkles, textures, striations, etc. In the end, what we’ve created then looks artificial or lacking that genetic or situational “luck of the draw” appearance so necessary for organic realism. For instance, our dapples can become too similar in size, shape, and intensity, or our ticked hair growth patterns are too uniform and evenly spaced, or our wrinkles always look like accordion folds.
What’s more regimentation tends to force our hand to go out of scale as our PRR just goes bananas and takes over, and usually in a way that most efficiently — albeit not effectively — gets the job done. This is exactly how the hair-by-hair technique can go out of scale or how lacy effects can grow in size the further along we go.
Regimentation can also make us prone to adapting easy, familiar shapes such as circles for dapples or steaks for ticking. But we see that life just isn't like that...there's a lot more complication and organic mess to it. It's not so tidy and orderly, is it? Nope. It's that "ordered chaos" again, that organic messiness intrinsic to all structure and color which needs our attention inordinately more when we fight regimentation as we work. Again, use order to build a proper equine or color from the get-go, then use chaos to make it organic and realistic. Great equine realism is an expression of both!
Because our work entails duplicating life's organic patterns, it's implied then that our success relies on the minimization of our own contrived patterns we unintentionally infuse into our process. That’s to say not only do we instinctively recognize patterns in life, being artists, we create our own in the very act of duplicating them—argh! The problem when duplicating such things in clay or pigment becomes literally this: Creating a pattern that’s true to life without inadvertently imposing an artificial one of our own. No easy thing because each trips our PRR trigger big time. All this does pose interesting questions for our work…
- How do we do something repetitive, even tedious, without falling victim to that ever-present threat of regimentation?: We take breaks — either with walking away for a bit or simply working on another area of the piece. Also consider painting or sculpting upside down, with upside down references, or sideways even. We can also put our references and a photo of our piece through a photo editing program, even inverting the colors, giving us a fresh new view. We can use the window-trick to better perceive just how organically random things are. All this then throws our brain off-balance, forcing it to rely more on what it clinically Sees rather than what it wants to see. So try to keep your brain off-balance and questioning.
- How do we know when we’ve started creating regimentation?: When we start creeping out of scale is a pretty clear indication. So we have to do what it takes to stay in scale, even counting dapples across a region of the body if need be. What’s more, looking at our piece in a mirror can be a handy way to identify when we’ve gone off track. Pop a photo of our piece into a photo editing program and compare it side-to-side with our scaled reference, and pretty quickly we can tell if we’ve gone sideways. Or a big tell that we’ve fallen into regimentation is when we find ourselves zoning out and working in a rhythm. Indeed, doing anything in a rhythm is a dead giveaway. Another giveaway is falling into the habit of easy shapes rather than the complex, intricate shapes we see in life. For instance, a formulaic approach to muscle groups despite motion, or a series of orderly dots for dapples rather than the organic shapes and placements they tend to be in life. So we must stay constantly alert, vigilant, and aware to truly duplicate life’s organic chaos, and that’s a messy, disorderly business.
- Is "organic" the same as "random"?: Nope! "Organic" is the nexus between order and chaos, between structure and randomness, that living quality that exists between those two points of the spectrum. That's what we want to ping, that balance between a clear pattern and messiness, which is where life operates.
- Are there tricks we can apply that helps us fend off regimentation?: Doing those checks already discussed really help. Also, breaking up our rhythm with moments of chaos can help, too. Try switching brushes or tools at times as well.
- Is creating as little regimentation as possible the trick to organic realism?: Yep — that’s one of the biggies! We want to duplicate organic chaos, not our contrived formulas, so any tactic that minimizes our habitual way of doing things should be just the ticket.
- When do we actually need regimentation to establish a necessary recognizable pattern, and how do we balance that with organic chaos?: This is the sticky bit…we need just enough regimentation to create an actual equine or coat effect but not so much that we erase organic chaos. This balance is something we progressively learn as we advance, with the most advanced artists finding that balance pretty well. That’s to say, artists new to the equine realism game tend to have the most regimented expressions in clay or paint whereas the more seasoned artists tap much more into organic chaos. So it’s a learned ability most of the time because our brain leans into regimentation, so as long as we’re always working towards organic chaos we’ll likely hit our mark.
Artistic Style
Our brains are wired so well for pattern recognition that all this will become entrenched almost immediately, forming a kind of creative fingerprint. And as we grow, so does our PRR and then so do our aesthetics evolve and grow with us, too. This is the exact mechanism that creates our artistic style, that quality that makes each artist’s work so individually distinct.
But since pattern recognition operates outside of our consciousness, we're typically completely unaware of just how stylized our work really is if we don’t keep tabs on it. But this is exactly why we can see the stylization in the work of others but not in our own work—their patterns are different from ours and so they pop out at us much more clearly.
Yet artistic style isn’t to be frowned on, even in technical realism. Indeed, it’s the very thing that helps to keep this otherwise clinical art form from degenerating into something stale and irrelevant. In short, it keeps equine realism an art rather than something a mindless, soulless machine does. And different strokes for different folks, right? All the different styles appeal to a wide range of tastes, keeping this art form dynamic, vibrant, and ever-compelling! Even in realism, diversity is truly the spice of life as there are multiple ways to express reality well!
However, it does have a tricky side: Unless we keep tabs on it, our artistic style is going to run us aground in the realism department just as fast. The trick then is being able to pull our creative habits—our style—into our consciousness in order to make judgment calls on whether to keep them, tork them, or jettison them with any given piece. You see, it’s okay to choose to keep stylizations if they align with our goals. The problem only happens if unrealistic stylizations happen under our radar and we end up frustrated or confused because of it. For instance, I know I have stylistic habits in the way I sculpt and paint — I’m well aware of them. But I choose to keep them because I like the look of them and they’re my artistic stamp. And that’s the tricky gift—having that empowerment of choice. Absolutely, it makes all the difference in the world not only for the quality and distinctiveness of our art, but our enjoyment creating it.
Workarounds
So if thwarting our PRR is really about injecting more organic chaos into our work and releasing our grip on the set patterns of our assumptions and safe expectations, do we have a series of checks to do that? The happy answer is—yes!
For starters, we can associate our new pieces with emotions or impressions rather than just appearances. In other words, if we allow our creative guts to be moved more by visceral motivations, we tend to loosen up with logistical fixations and habits. In short, we should learn to follow our guts more rather than our heads.
In addition, as Lesli Kathman observed, "There really isn’t any substitute for looking at hundreds and hundreds of variations of the same pattern.” And that’s just it, study—a lot. Literally, if it takes looking at one hundred articulated forelegs or one hundred dapple greys to ferret out all the structured similarities or organic differences between them, then that’s what we need to do. Because when we practice life study or analyze our references, we need to be paying keen attention to what’s different between them, not just what’s the same. Or rather, we gain a lot when we perceive the commonalities, yes, but we gain even more when we perceive the differences since it’s there where organic chaos is to be found.
We should actively seek to challenge our habitual practices, approaches, and tastes with every new piece. Quite literally, what’s something technical that's fresh and new can we inject today in our new piece? Like, always ask, "What if?" You see, it’s not enough to create simply a new concept, we have to create something new technically. So to that end, think about picking references and inspirations that look odd to us, that cause our eyebrow to rise up, and think about how we can infuse that into a new piece. When we turn our work into an exploration of things that challenge our sensibilities, we come that much closer to expressing Nature’s organic diversity. Put another way, our longterm success doesn’t just hinge on those patterns we reproduce, but also on how we tweak them accurately and curiously.
Lastly, always remember that we’re each a complete, self–contained, self-informing universe with an utterly unique frame of reference. What a wonderful thing! But it does have that hitch—it’s an inherent conflict of interest loop—so if we aren’t continually aware of this, trouble isn’t far behind. But if we're aware and practice tactics to keep it in check, we’ll have opened the door to a much bigger world of possibility and progress achievable no other way. Absolutely, with vigilance and awareness in tow, there’s pretty much nothing authentic we cannot duplicate in this demanding and exacting art form.
The Gift of Pattern Recognition
Despite all these complications though, our PRR does have a big benefit when it comes to equine realism: If we get the biological pattern right, we can use it as a highly effective springboard into possibility. Indeed, if we know our basics really well, we're in an impeccable position to tackle anything really well, too. In turn, this leads to creative boldness and confidence, with stronger and more challenging work not far behind. Quite literally then, it’s a wise use of our PRR that directly generates innovation and improvement as we break from our old patterns to build fresh new ones.
Indeed, torking our PRR is a powerful means to learn and grow! Really, our work stays the same if we don't morph it and where’s the fun in that? Routes to advanced development with all the exciting revelations, inventions, growth, and surprises are just waiting for us! Being so, it really helps to keep us geared for challenges that keep our motivations fired up. That being the case, tweaking our PRR is a great way to stay off artistic plateaus, root out our blindspots, and manage our habits and formulas as well was staying enthusiastically engaged in our work.
So our PRR isn’t such a bad thing, is it? Nope! It can be an enormous and indispensable positive that keeps us forging ahead with courage, inspiration, and enlightenment! In this sense then, think about framing PPR as a tool, one that can be redesigned to better work for us at any point in our development.
Conclusion
Learning to put our PRR to work rather than letting it work us over is perhaps the biggest jump in quality we can ever make, even beyond skill building. Our skills are easily attended to with classes, experimentation, and practice, but it’s that ability to tork our PRR that’s the real crux of the progress issue. Get a hold of that and the sky is the limit!
But the big takeaway is this—we must not come to this animal with preconceived notions or intentions. We must remain open and unassuming, as free as possible from our blindspots, plateaus, biases, expectations, and especially an overly skewed perception and an overactive pattern recognition response. If we don’t, we risk more than we may suspect as regimentation and confining comfort zones aren’t far behind. But the nifty thing about that is this: Both our perception and pattern recognition response gift us with a direct means to project our advancement into orbit if we attend to them in ways that improve their data gathering tendencies. We have a straightforward means to kick our work up several notches in one go—that’s a lot of bang for the buck! So it’s not so much a problem with our patterns per se, it’s a problem of not understanding how they can dictate our work in ways that can kick us off track. Simply get a handle on that, and we’re well on our way to meaningful and tangible progress on our own terms! And I can’t think of a better habit to have than that!
"If something keeps happening, there is a pattern behind it...Your results are not accidental. They are patterned. When you change the pattern, you change the outcome.”
— Tony Robbins
