Drawing Without Sight

Peter Lumley

"Hello!"......... A young girl wearing a floppy blue hat greeted me as I entered the Nursery and whisked me off to look at the collection of farm animals she was playing with. This was Sarah.

...my name is Sarah Eley. I am now eleven years old, and my birthday is on November the 15th. I have a mum called Jenny, and a dad called Tony. I also have a little four year old sister called Charlotte. She can be extremely annoying. I have two pets, a rabbit called Nibbles, who is six, getting quite old now, and a dog called Tara, who is fifteen, sixteen this year, and looks like a fox. We got her from the RSPCA, after her old owners, had left her out in the snow, when she was only six months.

Even though I am blind, I manage quite well, even if I say so myself. I shoot round at home, and am one of the fastest children going up and down the stairs at school. I do not let my blindness interrupt, or change my life in anyway. I go horse riding, dancing, swimming, and even school, like any other child of eleven.

If I ever do get upset, or feel sorry for myself, I just say to myself, "You are much luckier than many people. Think of people like E...., who has no hands. Think how lucky you are, you have your hands, just no sight. You are much better off than lots of people. Make The Most Of It!" This usually helps.

The hat was not just a fashion statement, Sarah had an eye condition called Retinoblastoma and had had an operation to remove one of her eyes and as a result of the treatment she was receiving had lost her hair. A few years later, when I was working with Sarah at Markeaton, she lost her sight completely after a tumor was discovered in her remaining eye and it also had to be removed.

When I was one, I had cancer in my right eye, and had to have my sight removed from that eye. After this, the doctors and nurses at Barts hospital where I was going to be treated said I was fine, the Cancer was gone. But when I was five, my eye sight faltered again, and the doctors and nurses discovered that I had Cancer again, this time in my left eye. After this, I had another operation, removing the sight in my left eye. This operation left me completely blind, not able to see at all.

Prior to the operation we were able to teach Sarah Braille and during this time we also produced a wide range of tactile materials for Sarah to explore at home. We felt that Sarah was well prepared to begin learning tactually after she lost her sight.

It therefore came as a surprise when her first request after the operation was for a colouring book. I discussed this with our Resource Officer who produced a small collection of pictures on ‘Swell Paper’. As neither of us felt this activity had any developmental potential for a child with no sight little time was spent in adapting the pictures for colouring and we left their original texture fills unchanged. Armed with her ‘smelly felt tips’ Sarah began colouring a picture of a large butterfly. I was surprised to observe that Sarah not only enjoyed the sensation she recieved from colouring over the textures but that she was able to use this feedback to help her successfully colour the picture. Her colouring didn’t stop with these books and has become an important part of Sarah’s drawing activity. Throughout her time at Markeaton Sarah continued to colour in her own pictures which were transferred from ‘German Film’ to ‘Swell Paper’ for this purpose.

**page from colouring book

At the same time Sarah began spontaneously to use her Perkin’s Brailler for drawing. The first of these drawings, which were of fairly regular shaped objects such as houses, yachts and birthday cakes, demonstrated Sarah’s uncanny spatial awareness not only in the symmetrical placement of shapes on the Braille paper but also in the accurate way she could Braille diagonal lines to link the corners of shapes precisely. She chose to colour in most of these pictures and also began adding some textured materials such as fur and card to them. Later she began to use her Brailler to produce less regular shapes and began to draw people, flowers and animals including dogs, cats, polar bears and seals. To represent these natural forms realistically Sarah used a wide range of different dot combinations to produce curved and wiggly lines.

**egs of Braille pictures

When Sarah was introduced to German Film, (a thin sheet of plastic which, when placed on a rubber mat and drawn on, produces raised lines which can be felt), she immediately began to successfully transfer the type of drawings she was producing using a Brailler to this new medium. To begin with Sarah would draw the outline, mainly an animal, of what she wanted to draw. The placement of her drawings on the German Film was always very precise and she was able to use both her hands to ensure that these very complex outlines were always joined precisely. It wasn’t long before Sarah began to use a range of different patterns such as lines, zig-zags and dots to add texture to the background of her pictures. She also began adding details such as eyes, hair and mouths, to her drawings placing them with great accuracy within the outline she had created. Her ability to retain a mental picture of her drawing seemed uncanny.

** egs of early German Film pictures

At this time drawing not only provided Sarah with a great deal of personal satisfaction but also gained her the respect and praise of her sighted peers who could readily appreciate her skill visually. The importance of drawing for Sarah’s self esteem could not be underestimated but it was hard to see how she could develop, or even maintain her current standard, due to the lack of any visual input and her receding visual memory. In view of this it was totally unexpected to observe Sarah’s drawing continue to develop in the same way as her sighted peers as she sought to solve problems, such as perspective, for herself.

In the picture of Gandalf from her Lord of the Rings series, Gandalf is shown holding his staff with his arm passing in front of his body and his cloak hanging down behind him. This picture clearly demonstrates Sarah’s understanding of the relationship between things in three-dimensional space and is her first attempt to represent this relationship.

In the picture of the Drawing Room from her series to illustrate the different rooms in a Victorian household, Sarah shows two people playing chess. In this picture she effectively shows the hand of one of the players, beautifully poised, reaching over the board to move the bishop. Sarah has also drawn an oil lamp in the background, behind the game, to give her picture depth.

In another picture from this series a lady is shown, from behind, reaching up to a shelf to place some item on a shelf in the Pantry. The picture clearly represents the relationship between the woman and the shelf in space. Something that Sarah had worked out how to do since loosing her sight.

Alongside her drawing Sarah also began to model her ideas in clay. As with her drawings most of her models were initially of animals. These, especially a series of dogs, not only represented the animal’s form accurately but also showed the animals in very naturalistic poses. In one History lesson, during which the children were drawing Ancient Egyptian artifacts, I gave her a replica of Tutankhamen’s death mask and some clay with which to model it. To my surprise and without any support Sarah was able to produce an almost perfect copy of the mask

I love making clay models. This is partly because models are like pictures to me, pictures I can feel, and examine. Making the models are, to me, like drawing a picture, if I make a polar-bear, it is, for me, like drawing a polar-bear. The other reason I enjoy making clay models are, I like the feel of the wet, smooth clay in my hands. I am the master of the clay, it will do whatever I make it do, will not resist me.

The most recent development in Sarah’s drawing was totally unexpected and came when a visitor from Switzerland came to Markeaton to observe our work with visually impaired children. During a tour of the facility I introduced our visitor to Sarah and began telling him about her drawing. Sarah wanted to demonstrate her skill immediately but there was no ‘German Film’ readily available. Undeterred Sarah took a piece of plain paper and without hesitation drew a horse on it for our visitor. The horse was faultless and greatly impressed us all. Sarah has continued to draw on paper using whatever feedback she receives from the marks she makes on it, even managing to colour her pictures in. As these begin to fill sketch books I wait in awe for future developments in her drawing and hope that her enthusiasm for pictures will never diminish.