DRAW LIKE A BYZANTINE

A new phrase, Draw Like a Byzantine, has crept into these pages without any warning. Let’s try to formalize the meaning of this phrase so as to bring it into our lexicon.

To Draw Like a Byzantine means to draw without any coherent sense of contiguous space.  By that I mean that you need to draw paying no attention to any established and accepted drawing method or system.  If you drawing has isometric tendencies, not all of the elements that are supposed to be parallel need to be.  If you draw with perspectivist overtones, not everything that is orthogonal with each other needs to radiate back to some central point.

To Draw Like a Byzantine means that you employ Byzantine Spacetime, which can be achieved by following the guidelines, such as they are, in the paragraph above.  Byzantine Spacetime can also be achieved by drawing in a humanistic mode, rather than some sort of objectively rational construct.

To Draw Like a Byzantine means that you draw to solve the problem and to complete the form.  It means that you can draw any way you want.  The only real requirement is that it has to be transparent.

To Draw Like a Byzantine means to operate in the multiview.  It means that your drawing must include a time component.

To Draw Like a Byzantine means to eliminate the vanishing point.  It means to reject any Western drawing convention that might be presented in Ching, if that suits your purposes.

To Draw Like a Byzantine only heightens your responsibilities with a pencil and paper.  Now that you are completely free from any established imagery conventions, you have the added burden of drawing with greater fidelity.  Our rejection of the Cartesian linear perspective and Western isometric rules means you can’t hide behind any of it anymore.

Your drawing, removed from the secular geometry of the Western mindset, now has a greater sacred purpose.