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Objects and Instruments

THE THINGS WE INVENT describe our lives. C o m m o n items, from spoons and pens
to chairs and bicycles, are all made bearing the signature of our time and place.

History will be learned from the artifacts we leave behind. Engineers and designers

of our objects and instruments make drawings for many reasons: to test an idea that

is yet to be made, for example, to record an observed detail, or to explain and present

a finished concept to a client.

The Industrial Revolution changed the traditional ways in which objects

were designed, planned, and made. Previously, craftsmen had held plans in their

memory, passing them on to others through the act of making. With the sudden onset

of mass production, drawings were needed to instruct workers on the factory floor.

Technical drawing was speedily developed as a meticulous international code of

measurement and explanation. The precision of engineering drawings evolved

alongside machine tools, each demanding more of the other as they increased in

sophistication. It was in this era that the blueprint was born. Today, even more

advanced drawings are made on computers.

Birds follow instinct to make a nest, and some apes use simple tools, but humans

are the only creatures on Earth who actually design and create great ranges of things.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Inthisbeautiful red chOalku r items all have a p u r p o s e — p r a c t i c a l or o r n a m e n t a l — a n d all have a meaning, or

drawing we see Leonardo

daVinci'sprecision ascaan be given meaning. Artists and actors use the meanings of things to communicate

speculative mechanic. H e

has described a casttinhgrough metaphor. A chair, for example—whether, drawn, sculpted, or used on stage

hood for a mold t o make

theheadof a horse foar s a p r o p — i m b u e d w i t h e n o u g h energy or character can "become" a man.

an equestrian statue. It is

shaped in sections w i t h Artists have for centuries studied and expressed composition, design, color,

hooked bars that can be

pulled and tied closely form, texture, and the behavior of light through making still-life paintings and

together. H e has described

contour and function at drawings. In past eras, these, too, have often carried great weights of allegorical
once, making a clear

instruction t o his bronmze-eaning. Artists also make images of objects that can never exist; fictional realities

caster of h o w t o make it

andhowit will work. that test our logic with a sense of mystery. In this chapter, we look at the importance

of light in the creation of pictorial illusions, and the way in which the brain reacts

Head and Neck Sections to visual stimulus and optical illusions. We also explore volume and form in the
of Female Mold for the

Sforza Horse drawing classes by spinning lines to make vessels, illuminating snail shells, and

c. 1493

117/8c81/4in ( 3 0 0 x 210 m m )

L E O N A R D O D A VINCcI reating a wire violin.