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Drawing for Product Designers Kevin Henry Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Kevin Henry
ISBN(s): 9781856697439, 1856697436
Edition: Paperback
File Details: PDF, 42.81 MB
Year: 2012
Language: english
DRAWING FOR
PRODUCT DESIGNERS

Laurence King Publishing

Drawing for Product Designers

Published in 2012 by
Laurence King Publishing Ltd
361–373 City Road
London EC1V 1LR
Tel: +44 20 7841 6900
Fax: +44 20 7841 6910
email: [email protected]
www.laurenceking.com

Design © 2012 Laurence King Publishing Limited

Text © 2012 Kevin Henry

Kevin Henry has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs, and
Patent Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 85669 743 9

Series and book design: Unlimited

Project editor: Gaynor Sermon

Printed in China

Author’s dedication:
To my wife Doro for such long and unbending love and to
my daughter Klara for the joys that only children can bring.

Related study material is available on the Laurence King

website at www.laurenceking.com
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7

1 UNDERSTANDING SKETCHING 10

2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SKETCHING 24

3 DEFINING SKETCHING 42
60
62
64

4 ORIENTATION 66
72
74
76
78
80

5 REGISTRATION 82
92
94
96

6 FORM 98
108
110
112
114
7 LINE 116
128
129
130

8 EXPLORING FORMS IN SPACE 133

150
152
154

9 EXPLAINING FORMS IN SPACE 156

170
172
174
176

10 EXPLORING FORMS IN TIME 179

186
187
188
190
192

11 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER 194

202

GLOSSARY 204
INDEX 205
PICTURE CREDITS 207
FURTHER READING 207
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 208
6

INTRODUCTION:

0
DRAWING
CONNECTIONS

Fig. 1
This sketch from HLB’s Boston office is an early
iteration of a design diagram intended to visualize
complex research data in a way that will make it
clearer to both the design teams and the client.
Introduction: Drawing Connections 7

Why read this book?

Sketching remains the fastest and most direct method for designers to get ideas
out on paper, whether they work in a collaborative setting or solve problems
alone. It can be differentiated from drawing by its level of refinement: drawing
tends to be more deliberate and accurate, following on from the initial sketching
process. Sketching should not, however, be thought of as simply giving form to
objects and spaces; it should be seen more universally as a tool for thinking,
planning, and exploring. It is used by a wide range of people including scientists,
mathematicians, engineers, economists, and coaches to help explain, provide
instruction, or simply think “aloud” on paper. In a world of increasingly complex
and instantaneous information, quickly sketched visualizations can help simplify
and compress data far more efficiently than language. Sketching can also help
visualize interactions or scenarios for smart devices such as mobile phones or
services more generally.
Sketching, like writing, works in two ways—it can be active (like writing)
or receptive (like reading)—but it is different to writing primarily because of its
immediacy: sketched marks often correspond one-to-one with what they
represent. And while some technical knowledge might be required to understand
technical drawings, most sketches can be “read” by anyone, anywhere, with
Fig. 2
seemingly little effort. The design process is extremely varied. It relies
Drawing’s real power lies in its immediacy and speed; its capacity to on many different ways of recording, organizing,
and refining ideas including: Post-it notes, quick
materialize thoughts and ideas quickly so that they can be expanded upon or
sketched doodles or handwritten notes, color
shared before they disappear. The designer uses lines and marks to shepherd coding or spatial organization, diagramming,
ideas into existence while they are still only partially formed in his or her mind. and flowcharting. Sketching is vital to every
one of these methods because of its speed
This process—a cumulative rather than linear one—allows the designer to go
and provisional nature.
back to a sketch and add to, or subtract from, it or simply revisit ideas on paper
and continue the thinking process begun earlier. Such sketch ideation is not
simply a matter of documentation or observation; instead it is a highly creative
and dynamic act where the power and poetry of line can capture character and
begin defining form or clarifying connections thereby enhancing communication.
Sketching can be used to show cause and effect, time-based interactions,
or form factors.

Fig. 3
The many ways in which sketching can assist in
the design process include general diagrams,
cause and effect sketches, quick ideation sketches,
scenario-based sketches, and concept renderings.
While all these forms are different they also have
a great deal in common.
8

Over time these skills evolve into a singular, consolidated method as the
designer matures and gains the confidence required to push and pull unrealized
ideas on paper or a computer screen. Understanding the ways in which these
skills can work separately, as well as how they can be leveraged and merged
for stronger visualizations, is critical to any design practice. Sketching, drawing,
and visualization in general become inseparable from design thinking.
In order to create a bridge between freehand sketching skills and digital-
based visualization tools, I have devised a unique system that utilizes the language
and techniques of both approaches: analog and digital. The method is grounded
in the long and rich history of perspective, which informs contemporary computer
Fig. 4
These storyboard sketches from Gravity Tank are software, as well as current and past theories of the cognition and vision so critical
used as a preliminary tool to flesh out a particular to understanding how humans see and think. The explanations and tutorials in this
problem or set of issues. The simple “cartoonish”
book clearly demonstrate how to visualize ideas quickly and effectively. Applying
sketches provide a quick and approximate method
for getting the details of potential stories out, and the logic and processes of computer-aided design to analog sketching helps to
are a refined way to envision potentially larger and amplify and clarify many drawing techniques while allowing for a smoother
more detailed stories. The final deliverable
transition between paper and computer.
presented to the client is often a high-fidelity video
presentation with sound and minimal animation, to For this book, hundreds of hand-drawn sketches have been scanned or
create an engaging and captivating story. re-traced in the computer and line art from computer models has been created
specifically to demonstrate the connection between the analog and digital.
The reader will learn to think fluidly in a three-dimensional world and, through
practice, be capable of building complex design ideas that are structurally sound
and visually clear. Central to the book is the idea that many design disciplines are
blurring their boundaries. Skills that have been important to architects and
industrial designers are becoming equally important to illustrators and
information designers, and vice versa. This is reflected in the reality that designers
(of every discipline) are using similar digital tools (vector-based graphics, raster-
based photo manipulation software tools, computer-aided design, and time-
based animation software).

Using this book

Learning to sketch and draw effectively is not merely a technical skill but one
that requires a deeper understanding of the mechanics of vision, cognition,
and representation. The history and evolution of drawing is amplified by the
history of human psychology, creating a powerful and unified narrative (chapter
1, Understanding Sketching and Chapter 2, The Psychology of Sketching).
While many students feel strongly that sketching and drawing are innate
abilities, I believe that anyone can learn to draw if they are provided with clear
explanations, instructions, and properly paced exercises. For this reason the book
is structured around a single narrative that merges history and theory, and gives
in-depth explanations alongside step-by-step demonstrations.

Fig. 5
The sketch by Mexico City-based designer
Emiliano Godoy represents an exploration process
to define the concept of the cup and saucer in the
photograph. While the sketch bears similarities to
the photograph it also leverages sectional details,
various orthographic views, and shading to help
understand the form.
Introduction: Drawing Connections 9

Fig. 6
This scenario from Teague Design is intended to
communicate a particular type of on-screen
interaction. Sketching in low fidelity over time can
help the designer get ideas out quickly for later
refinement. See chapter 8 (Exploring Forms in
Space) for more detail.

The first two chapters introduce students to the history and psychology
of drawing. Chapters 3 and 4 are foundational and delve into the mechanics of
visualization and its connection to visual thinking. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 discuss
processes and focus on the particulars of form and line, demonstrating just how
critical these are to confident design ideation. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 deal with
application and are concerned with issues beyond simple sketching, including
color, explanation, articulation, information graphics, and composition. All these
can help take good design ideation to the next level and make it easier for a client
or colleague to engage with it. Finally, chapter 11 discusses how the skills and
processes described in the previous chapters can be combined at the macro level
of creating design stories.
As anyone who sketches easily and effectively knows, sketching can be a
transcendent process—if the pen were to suddenly run out of ink the thinking
process would grind to a halt. Ideas seem to flow from the brain through the pen
and onto the paper; and occasionally onto the computer screen. For individuals
who are not proficient in sketching the process can be slow and tedious. If
learning to sketch can be compared to learning to ride a bike, there is a moment
when they simply have to let go and “experience” the freedom that speed and
confidence in sketching can provide. For this reason, the physical connection to
the act of drawing is central to this book. Designers, like dancers, musicians, and
athletes, need to build “muscle memory” in order to make the most of their skills.
Repeating the tutorials is designed to flex those muscles.
When sketching is mastered the designer should feel as though he or she is
creating on paper; making rather than merely recording. For this reason, I have
searched for clear analogies, examples, and metaphors wherever possible to
provide a mental map of what is going on at every level. I have personally created
the majority of the visual explanations in the book, relying on the same techniques
I teach, including analog sketching, computer-aided design, and graphic
illustration, to ensure continuity. In the cases where I have included examples from
other designers to help amplify the book’s central themes I have included
contextualized captions and credits.
10

UNDERSTANDING

1
SKETCHING
Chapter 1 Understanding Sketching 11

The natural ambiguity of lines

The first thing a student needs to understand is that lines do not really exist in
nature, yet lines and edges are primarily what designers rely on to sketch ideas.
There are no lines in flowers or fruit or faces or fish, only outlines and edges, both
of which change as the object or the viewer moves. The photograph of my
daughter (Fig. 1) can be reduced to a series of curves and contours (re-traced in
Adobe Illustrator) that define recognizable shapes such as eyes, lips, and ears.
These natural features and openings are defined by their edges and occasionally,
like the internal lines of the lips, by their contours.

Fig. 1
The photograph represents the highest fidelity image,
while the traced sketch represents the lowest fidelity.
Adding contour lines raises the fidelity slightly, making
it easier to understand the three-dimensionality of the
face. Shading and shadows on a sketch can also
increase fidelity.

The skin’s surface, however, is a continuous membrane of flesh no different to Fig. 2

the skin of an orange. It masks the underlying structure of the skull much as the
smooth surface of a plastic object hides the geometry of its internal structure.
Let’s use the example of an inner tube (or torus in CAD terminology), which
can be fiendishly difficult to draw given the fact that the skin is a continuous
uninterrupted surface—like an orange skin or as on a face. Only a seasoned
sketcher could draw this object using only three or four lines or arcs. The most
direct method is to construct the form out of sections, which requires knowledge
Torus with rough inner structure
of the internal form. This is precisely what a computer program does. The addition
of modeling (shading and shadow) along with highlights helps to better define the
form’s three-dimensionality. In order to draw a partial torus, the most effective
way is to create the whole wireframe and then cut away what is not needed. So
while drawing accurate linework is crucial to good visualizations there are many
other things to consider, including reflectivity, point of view, direction or
orientation, and fidelity.
Torus with wireframe
Fidelity is one of the most crucial terms used throughout this book to
differentiate between the various modes of realism in visualization. The term high
fidelity (hi-fi) dates back to the 1930s when it was used to refer to audio or visual
images that were so realistic as to be indistinguishable from the original. The term
lives on in the design world to differentiate refined and realistic from quick and
schematic. Interaction designers and industrial designers alike use it in sketching
or wireframing to distinguish quick initial ideas from more resolved and refined
ones. The term is used throughout the book. Rendered torus showing part of wireframe
12

Fidelity is also a critical term in sketching and prototyping. Quick sketches tend to
be low fidelity (low level of realism) while tighter line drawings (like the one of my
daughter, for example) could be thought of as medium fidelity (realistic enough to
be recognizable as my daughter).
While a photograph is the ideal example of high fidelity, a tight line drawing
that has been rendered, as in the water pitcher (fig. 3), to include shade, shadow,
and highlights can also be considered high fidelity. Fidelity is ultimately about
tricking the eye much as a realistic painting does. But the designer has to be able
to create the accurate sketch geometry of an object in order to raise the fidelity
that comes through rendering light, color, shade, and shadow. Knowing when
lower fidelity sketches are more appropriate than higher fidelity ones is a key
aspect of any designer’s workflow.

Why sketching in an age of computing?

Fig. 3
This sketch of a water pitcher includes shadows
and highlights, and can therefore be considered Students often ask why they need to learn to draw at all when they can get the job
“high fidelity.” done with a computer. My standard response is that they will only get out of the
computer what they are able to put in to it (garbage in = garbage out). Software
cannot miraculously visualize what someone is thinking but requires specific input,
which in turn requires knowledge of sketching and drawing—a perfect loop with
each process informing the other. While computer-aided design softwares differ
in their fundamental approaches to creating geometry (surfaces versus solids, for
example) they all require the designer to “build” form through sketching using the
same types of geometry—lines, arcs, circles, curves, etc. (see fig. 4).

Fig. 4
Sketching on a flat sheet of paper is very
similar to “building” on a flat computer screen.
There is always an underlying structure to objects,
whether sketched or built, and even the process
of manipulation can be very similar—such as
removing a slice from an object or filleting the
edge of a cube.
Chapter 1 Understanding Sketching 13

Let’s look at a single example: a detergent bottle. The illustrations in fig. 5

show a few steps from the sketching process. Note that the sketches in this case
are largely confined to flat planes as they would be in many CAD programs, and
serve as boundary edges that define the object’s primary sectional geometry.
The screen shot (fig. 6) shows the very beginnings of a surface model of a similar
detergent bottle created in SolidWorks—the one surface is comprised of five
separate sketches. The designer, whether working in analog or digital modes,
goes through a very similar process to arrive at the final form. The more aligned
these activities become the easier it will be to transition back-and-forth. This is the
goal of the book: to bring these activities together by interrelating their processes
and vocabulary.
Thinking about computer-aided design software as an entirely new
technology is to miss the close connection between these modes of drawing.
CAD combines the logic of the original projection systems—from orthographic
to three-point perspective—and translates it through complex algorithms and
well-designed interfaces into software that describes geometric form digitally.

Fig. 5
Building computer models is like “building”
design sketches. The two processes complement
each other and require knowledge of planes,
projection, dominant and subordinate curves, and
operations like trimming or extending surfaces.

Profile
(sketch 5)

Guide curve
(sketch 1)

Path
(sketch 4) Fig. 6
The two sets of languages, while not identical,
are intimately related as indicated in the hand
sketches for a detergent bottle (fig. 5) and the
SolidWorks screen shot of an initial surface for a
detergent bottle (left).
14

In the illustration below (fig. 7) I have overlaid Paolo Uccello’s original fifteenth-
century drawing of a chalice with a sectional profile that was then revolved
90 degrees (in red). The computer-generated form lines up with the original
Renaissance drawing surprisingly well. I created this 3D model not using
CAD software but rather a vector-based illustration tool, Adobe Illustrator,
which now has some simple CAD-like capabilities incorporated into the software.
The sophistication of Uccello’s drawing reminds us that Renaissance artists
understood the underlying laws of geometric projection; these laws have
been further codified into digital software including 2D graphic software.
The freehand sketch of a Thermos (fig. 9) relies on knowledge of
orthographic projection as well as an ability to imagine the resulting form
when it is revolved 360 degrees in space. The act of sketching a series of circles
(in perspective) along a central axis, all of which touch a dominant profile,
is analogous to a revolve in a computer-aided design program. In fact, it could be
argued that extrusions, lofts, sweeps, and most other CAD features are created in
nearly identical fashion when sketching freehand. This connection between CAD
and sketching is examined further in chapter 6 and chapter 8.

Fig. 7
(Right) Uccello’s famous chalice predates CAD
wireframes by 500 years. What appears to be a
polygonal surface model was carefully crafted
using the techniques of perspective and
orthographic projection discussed on page 19.

Fig. 8
(Below) Statue of Filippo Brunelleschi in
Florence, Italy.
Chapter 1 Understanding Sketching 15

Milestones in the evolution of drawing

Paolo Uccello’s chalice drawing shows just how closely related fifteenth-century
manual perspective drawing is to twentieth-century computer modeling. And
while Uccello’s wireframe is static and can neither be rotated nor zoomed its
construction builds on the foundation first established by Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377–1446) and later codified by his friend Leon Battista Alberti. Artists including
Pierro della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albrecht Dürer continued to refine
the practical knowledge while mathematicians like Girard Desargues, Simon
Stevin, and others developed and refined the theories. Computer modeling
is now going through a similar evolution, and its refinement owes a huge debt
of gratitude to these earliest pioneers, who not only empirically worked out
perspective methods but then codified that knowledge into instructions much
like the modern-day algorithms that run software. Oxford professor Martin Kemp
describes it this way in his book Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and
Science: “When we look into the implicit ‘boxes’ of space behind the screens of
our televisions or computers, we are distant legatees of Brunelleschi’s vision.”
Filippo Brunelleschi (fig. 8) was an Italian architect and engineer who was
responsible for designing, engineering, and overseeing the construction of the
dome for the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore (known as the Duomo) in Florence in
the fifteenth century. Although formally trained as a goldsmith, like so many artists
of the time, Brunelleschi moved into architecture and engineering quite naturally,
merging his knowledge from multiple disciplines (especially mathematics and
geometry) with a hands-on sensibility for material and process. He sought to
prove the systematic nature of vision and representation through an empirical
method now referred to as Brunelleschi’s “peepshow” (see over the page).

Fig. 9
The insulated Thermos is sketched and modeled
in analogous ways.
16

Idea
Brunelleschi’s peepshow, as the apparatus is often called, was an ingenious
empirical demonstration of perspective. The architect painted a perspectival
depiction of the baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence on a panel and drilled a
hole through it corresponding with the central vanishing point. Brunelleschi then
held the panel with the front facing the baptistry and the back opposite his eye. In
this way he could stare through the painting at the actual baptistry. By holding a
mirror in front of the painting he could see projected the painted image. By
removing and returning the mirror to the same position he could easily verify how
close to reality his image actually was.

In this illustration Brunelleschi peers through the

back of the painting he made of the baptistry at
a mirror that reflects back the image. He has
aligned the painted image to correspond as
closely as possible to the real building. By
removing the mirror he quickly sees the actual
structure. Returning the mirror he can compare
the painted image to the reality.
Here, Brunelleschi has positioned himself directly
in front of the octagonal baptistry building at
precisely the correct distance so that his painting
of the baptistry corresponds 1:1 with the actual
building. In his left hand he holds the mirror with
the reflected image from the painting. In his right
hand he holds the painting with the back facing
him and a small hole to peer through.
Chapter 1 Understanding Sketching 17

Innovation
Brunelleschi demonstrated the existence of a direct link between human vision
and projected reality. His mirror proved that reality can be captured accurately
and displayed on a flat surface. The image coming into the eye (cone of vision)
corresponded to the network of lines receding to a central vanishing point. As the
viewer changes orientation, the network of lines changes accordingly.
Alberti formalized and codified the peepshow method in his treatise “Della
Pittura” (On Painting), 1435–6. Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this
book is that it contains only text. While Brunelleschi relied largely on drawings to
prove his method, Alberti, who was trained as a lawyer before turning to
architecture and the arts, relied entirely on textual descriptions. The illustrations
that appear in modern translations were subsequently added as an appendix.
While it might seem improbable to describe a visual process through words alone,
both Ptolemy’s Geographia and Euclid’s Elements were also based more on
descriptions than visualizations.
Pythagoras (sixth century BC) and Euclid (fourth to third century BC) were
among the first individuals to detect a system of logic behind numerical
phenomena. They provided a mathematical language for describing geometry—
point, line, and plane—in addition to a repeatable method for creating regular
forms such as equilateral triangles and polygons. These simple descriptions were
used to develop more complex axioms and propositions. Euclid’s descriptions of
a line, for example, are terse and exact: “A line is length without breadth,” and
“The extremities of a line are points.” Such a descriptive step-by-step accounting
The octagonal plan of the baptistery makes it
is essentially an algorithm, which the dictionary defines as: “A process or set of relatively easy to draw using Florentine workshop
rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations.” Euclid’s methods based on grids. Well constructed tile
patterns commonly appeared in Renaissance
Elements, which was revived in the fifteenth century and became the most widely
paintings before the codification of perspective.
printed book after The Bible, provided a foundation for perspective drawing as
well as a model for the logic of computing nearly 2,500 years later.

Defining geometry in a manner that everyone

can agree on is difficult. Euclid defines a line as
length without breadth, while Alberti defines it
as a point extended directly in space. A plane is
a series of lines side-by-side, and finally a volume
is a series of planes stacked one on top of the
other. A line, therefore, might be considered
one dimensional; a plane is two dimensional; a
volume is three dimensional. A line has only
length; a plane has length and width; a volume
has length, width, and depth.

Alberti, in his treatise, transformed Euclid’s system into a far more practical
method. His description of a line, for example, while reminiscent of Euclid’s, is far
more visual: “A straight line is drawn directly from one point to another as an
extended point. The curved line is not straight from one point to another but
rather looks like a drawn bow. More lines, like threads woven together in a cloth,
make a plane.” These descriptions provided apt visual counterparts for other
artists struggling to understand this new codified system of drawing.
18

Idea
Alberti improved Brunelleschi’s system by adding a second plane (picture plane)
through which the viewer’s line of sight is intersected, resulting in accurate
transversals (the lines that determine depth on a tile floor, for example). These
intersecting points are projected across to intersect with the orthogonals that
recede back to the vanishing point.

Transversal
lines Picture
plane
Orthogonal
lines

Ground
plane

Innovation
The picture plane (often referred to as Alberti’s window) provided a useful
metaphor for thinking about vision and representation. Euclid had previously
defined vision as a cone constructed of visual rays with the vertex at the center
of the retina. This “cone of vision” (also known as the visual pyramid) intersects
the flat picture plane (see illustration above) resulting in an image seen from a
specific vantage point. Change the vantage point (angle of view) or the distance
from an object and the image changes with it (see left illustration).
The base of the cone or pyramid is defined by the plane furthest away.
When looking straight out on to the horizon the depth of view is infinite. When
staring at an object on the floor the depth is finite: the cone of vision ends at the
floor like the beam of a flashlight.
Alberti’s metaphor of the window, which acts like a flat but transparent
plane that captures the depth of any view and flattens it on to a two-dimensional
surface, was critical to the evolution of perspective.

The cone or pyramid of vision is illustrated in red.

Changing the distance or orientation of the
object or the viewer (vantage point) changes the
image on the retina of the eye.

This photograph taken through a window in

Hagia Sofia has been re-traced to illustrate
Alberti’s idea of the picture plane as window.
Chapter 1 Understanding Sketching 19

The Italian painter and mathematician Piero della Francesca (1415–92) further
consolidated the ideas developed by Brunelleschi and Alberti, adding greater
rigor and method. Art historian and author James Elkins describes Piero’s process:
“Before they can be used in the proof, rays must become lines, ‘eyes’ points, and
angles triangles.” Piero managed to translate the power of geometry into a
language of drawing, and in the process connected the accuracy of orthographic
projection to the dynamism of one-point perspective; validated by the power of
the diagonal, which serves as a verification tool for the exact placement of every
nodal point in the perspective view. A kind of hinge exists between the
orthogonal and perspectival planes, around which the orthographic projection
swings into perspectival space. The diagonal, in conjunction with the boundaries
of the plane and orthogonal and transversal lines, allowed for the creation of a
reliable network of intersecting lines and resulting nodal points that connected
the flat orthographic view on the face with the perspectival view on top (fig. 10)
Fig. 10
The sequence below (fig. 11) shows how the pentagon is slowly mapped The illustration demonstrates the multiple steps
point for point from the front plane (orthographic front view) up to a one-point involved in mapping a single point from the
perspective view on top of the cube. The diagonal on the top plane is a “mirror orthographic view to what will become a
perspective view (one-point perspective). The
reflection” of the diagonal on the front plane, only viewed in perspective. diagonal in conjunction with the single vanishing
point makes all of this possible.

Fig. 11
Each of the pentagon’s vertices on the front plane
is run orthogonally over to the diagonal, and then
orthogonally up to the top plane where it is
projected back towards the single vanishing point
as a transversal line. Before reaching the vanishing
point it intersects the top diagonal, which is then
projected orthogonally. This orthogonal line will
intersect with the second projection of the same
point to form a nodal point of intersection. This
process is repeated for every point.
20

Idea
Piero della Francesca put perspective on a firmer footing by extending what his
predecessors had done. His deep understanding of mathematics and geometry,
combined with the practical experience he gained in Florentine workshops,
allowed him to connect perspective more directly to orthographic projection.
2.

3.
On the left is a pentagon in plan view “hinged” to a perspectival plane upon
1. which the same pentagon is drawn. The diagonal cuts through both views
4.
providing a critical reference line in the perspective view to help define locations
5.

of critical nodal points in space.

5.

4.
Innovation
Piero established a clear and mutual relationship between an orthographic view
1.
hinged to a perspectival view via the diagonal. Critical points in the orthographic
view are projected through vertical and horizontal lines along the diagonal up to
the perspectival plane where they are accurately mapped in space.
3.

2.

Fig. 12
Piero’s method reconciles the power of
orthographic with that of perspective. In
contemporary terms this is the process a designer
would employ to “chase” points quickly up, down,
and around a sketch to establish crucial geometry
for rapid ideation sketching. This process is about
speed over accuracy.

The “rediscovery” of perspective initially focused on reliably reproducing what

was already present: the baptistery of San Giovanni, for example. However, artists
and engineers realized that they did not have to mimic (mirror-like) the pre-
existing reality demonstrated by Brunelleschi’s peepshow, but could use it to
help invent new worlds or new artifacts. The engineer Mariano Taccola was using
sketching as an exploration tool by the middle of the fifteenth century, but it was
the German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and his Italian contemporary
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) who leveraged this emerging visualization
technology to portray reality as well as to explore physical phenomena and
quantify form.
Dürer took Alberti’s window to the next level by building an operable
window frame with a sheet of parchment substituting for the glass pane, which
could be swung open for charting points and then closed for plotting them (see
fig. 13). This primitive perspective machine required two people to operate it.
One of them held a taut piece of string connected to a pointer or stylus at any
point on an object while the other moved a type of crosshair, or adjustable set of
vertical and horizontal strings, to mark each coordinate within the frame. Once the
crosshair was set the string was withdrawn and the window closed, so that the
point could be pierced into the parchment, thus creating an accurate constellation
of points by which to map the object.
Chapter 1 Understanding Sketching 21

Drawing involved connecting the dots; a process described earlier by Piero

della Francesca where the rays are lines and the eyes are points. Dürer’s first
perspective machine was refined by adding an actual gridded window and
a stationary eyepiece to help focus the artist’s sight while he translated the
information to a similarly gridded or mirrored sheet of paper placed on a
table (fig. 14). The whole process was anything but intuitive and fast, but it
did deepen the theoretical foundation upon which perspective was grounded;
and anticipated the Cartesian coordinate system developed more than 100
years later by the French mathematician René Descartes (see p. 83, The
scaffold metaphor).

Fig. 13
Albrecht Dürer built some of the earliest
“perspective machines” to help codify the drawing
process. The metaphor of the “window” has
persisted all the way up to the present day of
computer aided design.

Fig. 14
Another Dürer machine used a stationary point
and a “gridded window” through which to view
the object as an aid to accurate drawing.
22

Idea
The gridded picture plane as further refined by Dürer allowed for the accurate
mapping of any object. In fact, Dürer applied drawing systems to the
exploration of many problems including an early form of descriptive geometry,
human proportions, and physiognomy. Dürer’s primitive perspective machine
provided tangible proof of earlier theories of perspective by physically
connecting the “rays” of vision to the object through a “window” or gridded
frame. As primitive as this system might seem, it is a precursor of early computer
drafting programs like Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad, working as it does off a
system of inputted points plotted in space.

Innovation
When viewing objects in a natural setting or in a built environment such as a
building or other structure, the vanishing points will converge on the natural
(Above) Rays of vision are captured as points in
horizon line. This same horizon line will cut through the eye level of every Dürer’s gridded window frame. This approach
person standing in the landscape, regardless of how far away they are (see can be thought of as a precursor to early CAD
bottom picture). programs where points are physically plotted in
space with a pen tool.

(Left) Dürer’s gridded plane aids in accurately

depicting human proportions. Notice that the
grid lines are not uniformly spaced but are
consistently projected from view to view.

(Below) Perspective is so consistent that similar

height objects (or people) can be scaled simply
by referencing the horizon line. In the example
below the horizon line passes directly through
their eyes.
Chapter 1 Understanding Sketching 23

Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps more than any other artist of the Renaissance, used
sketching to record not only what exists but also to explore and explain what
might exist were it more visible. His research into the nature of light, shade, and
shadow helped him to better visualize the world in his paintings and frescoes
while adding greater depth to his illustrations of the human body and complex
machines. Through direct observation and diagrammatic drawing Leonardo was
able to theorize on issues as disparate as aerial perspective and the afterglow of
reflected light on the moon (earthshine). His inquisitive mind put sketching to the
task of understanding and recording anatomy, hydraulics, projectiles, motion, and
the makeup of the eye itself. He wrote in his notebooks (volume 1): “Drawing is
based upon perspective, which is nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the
function of the eye.” Leonardo’s drawings of the human body work in much the
way modern medical imaging technology does today, through slicing, sectioning,
and dissecting the body to expose underlying structures and mechanisms.
Leonardo also understood the limitations of static perspective receding to fixed
vanishing points, and that humans use binocular vision as well as visual cues like
shade and shadow to understand objects in space.

Idea
Leonardo da Vinci not only mastered perspective sketching but was also able to
leverage all forms of quick visualization—perspective, orthographic, section
cuts, details, etc.—to work out problems, much as a designer, mathematician, or
scientist does today. His notebooks remain the quintessential example of
creative sketching. Leonardo’s mastery over the medium allowed him to explore
everything, including the nature of seeing, using the tools of visualization. But he
also made important contributions in the areas of light and atmospheric effects
on vision that continue to affect the way we sketch and render today.

Innovation
Leonardo worked to visualize mathematical and geometrical forms for the
Renaissance mathematician Paccioli; for royal courts he studied and visualized
Leonardo da Vinci illustrated Luca Paccioli’s book
De Divina Proportione (The Divine Proportion) phenomena as diverse as sun mirrors, catapults, and flying machines, much as
on sacred geometry, and drew the first skeletal an engineer today might work out mechanical linkages on a product or device.
representations of geometric solids with
His drawings are the essence of design visualization, relying as they do on
complete accuracy.
orthographic, perspective, and quickly scribbled notes.

Brunelleschi’s accomplishment in accurately drawing the baptistery in Florence

before anyone else is certainly heroic. It was, however, primarily a technical feat.
It was Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer who clearly demonstrated the ability to think
with a pen, which, after all, is what design is really about. Today, the pen works
seamlessly in tandem with computers and other technologies to marshal ideas on
to paper or screens so that they can be reviewed, commented upon, and further
refined. It is the quality of the thinking that is valued above all else; yet conceptual
and technical knowledge are difficult to separate out. Students struggle with this
integration and often treat the acquisition of sketching as merely a technical skill;
one that even gets in the way of being creative. In fact, sketching has to be fast,
cheap, plentiful, suggestive, and exploratory just like thinking, which, as it turns
out, is a very visual process.
24

THE PSYCHOLOGY

2
OF SKETCHING

Fig. 1
Cursive handwriting is both unique and
categorically familiar. No two handwriting samples
are the same, yet we have little problem reading
them because we clearly discern the “model” or
cursive prototype within the unique adaptation
that is the individual’s handwriting.
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 25

The psychology of vision

The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker claims that humans rely less on words
than on visual images, auditory images, and propositions or rules of logic in order
to think. Even commonly used metaphors and analogies employ visual and spatial
attributes to provide us with a quick and easy context in which to communicate
and build thoughts. Donald Hoffman, author of Visual Intelligence, describes the
act of seeing as one of construction: scanning, comparing, categorizing, and
confirming. According to him we utilize a kind of internal library of forms
organized by category against which the brain checks and confirms—a process
involving logic combined with iconic, short-term, and long-term memory.
Thinking, like seeing and sketching, is a constructive process.
Hoffman claims that as babies we begin building our individual libraries
by cataloging shapes into broad but flexible categories, which accounts for why
we are able to distinguish a chihuahua from a St. Bernard while still recognizing
their mutual “dogness” (fig. 2). Such a catalog helps us to detect a “family Fig. 2
From an early age we can discern these two
resemblance” between, say, a shallow bowl and a plate or a cup and a soup entirely differently shaped entities as being
bowl while still identifying the specific characteristics of each (fig. 3). from the same “family.”

Fig. 3
The profiles of the bowl and plate are nearly
identical except for their depth. A bowl is really
a deep plate or, conversely, a plate is a shallow
bowl. A cup is a more intimate bowl with a handle
(affordance) for grabbing and holding. Viewing the
various profiles in the sketch demonstrates the
interrelationship or “family resemblance.”

Handwriting is another good example of interrelationship: humans can read

almost any cursive script while still recognizing the common underlying alphabet
(fig. 1). Our brains recognize the particular as a variation of the general. Another
example of this is our ability to recognize objects regardless of the vantage points
from which they are viewed—a phenomenon known as shape invariance (see fig.
4, over the page). Our capacity for developing coding rules or flexible
descriptions for entire classes of objects facilitates the rapid identification of
objects that is so critical to sketching.
26

Fig. 4
All the E’s are identical in font type and size. The
main difference is the vantage point from which
they are viewed. Except for the first E, the brain
has little trouble recognizing them as being
identical, which demonstrates the power of
shape invariance.

Fig. 5 Through practice a designer’s brain can be trained to project what something
Graphic software can take two distinct shapes might look like when rotated or manipulated, based in part on these coding rules,
and “blend” them, creating a kind of
transformational history. descriptions, and shape invariance.
Survival in evolutionary terms has required us to project our senses beyond
our immediate bodies. And while we can’t reach out and touch or taste something
that is 50 feet away, we can see, hear, and smell it from that distance. In fact,
we not only hear a rapidly approaching automobile from far off but can also sense
the direction from which the sound is coming and approximate the automobile’s
distance from us, and even its approximate speed, all in a split second. Such a
survival mechanism brings with it the added ability to imagine or consider things
that are not physically in our hands (or within our sight) but which instead reside
in our heads (our library of forms). We can also assign causality—”Where there’s
smoke there’s fire”—for example, imagining what a particular form looked like
before it was stepped on or squashed. Psychologist Michael Leyton refers to this as
a generative theory of shape. Various software packages now incorporate rule-
based processing to create simple primitives and complex forms or to transform
one shape into another (fig. 5). Such developments allow designers to think more
fluidly about how to manipulate form even through sketching. But how does the
psychology of seeing directly impact the process of sketching or visualizing ideas?

The mechanics of vision: several theories

The incredible speed with which the brain interprets information (millisecond)
makes it impossible to observe ourselves seeing, but nevertheless our brain, in
conjunction with our eyes, is actively constructing perceived reality out of all the
data that comes in: seeing is anything but a passive activity. The word “recognition”
is made up of the prefix “re” (once more) and “cognition” (to perceive or sense).
To recognize is to see familiarity in things through a repeated occurrence or a
pattern (family resemblance for example). But what exactly is a pattern and how do
we detect one? Pattern recognition was among the first phenomena psychologists
studied in the twentieth century to better understand vision, and many of their
ideas continue to impact our understanding today. Before we look more closely
at the current cognitive science behind vision, let’s review a few significant
contributions to the psychology of vision, which have provided a wealth of
concepts and metaphors as well as a vocabulary of terms critical to sketching.

Fig. 6 Ode to Joy in C major

Transposing a familiar melody such as Beethoven’s
Ode to Joy to another key moves not only the 4
notes but also the negative spaces or internal
4
relationships between the notes. Melodies, like
visual designs, have multiple sets of relationships
that define them. For the Gestaltists the “whole”
in this case would include the notes, the spaces
between the notes, and the time sequence. Ode to Joy in E major
#
4## #
4
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 27

Gestalt psychology
R
Gestalt psychology began in Germany, in the early part of the twentieth century, A G
initiated by a group of psychologists who explored the visual and cognitive IL N
mechanisms behind pattern recognition. The German word “gestalt” translates SI
S RO
RO
into English as shape, figure, or form and is often used interchangeably with
A
“design” in Germany today. Gestalt psychology was initially inspired by the C D
writings of the Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels, who first noted that a
musical melody transposed to another key (raising or lowering the individual notes)
remained recognizable to the ear because we hear (actually recognize) the whole
melody rather than the individual notes (fig. 6). Wolfgang Köhler, one of the original
Gestaltists, described this phenomenon as: “The whole is different than the sum of
its parts,” later revised as “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Max Wertheimer, a Czech psychologist and a senior member of the
Gestaltists, was traveling through Germany on vacation in 1912 when he noticed
a curious phenomenon: the simple sequence of blinking lights at a train crossing
simulated motion in his brain. Wertheimer exited the train at Frankfurt, purchased Fig. 7
The alternating blinking of lights at a train crossing
a toy stroboscope and began conducting simple experiments with various drawn tricks the brain into sensing motion where there
lines which, when revolved, created the illusion of motion. is none.
He and his colleagues Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler undertook a
series of experiments over many years to better understand this and other
visual phenomena. They began codifying what they observed into simple laws
of pattern recognition with names like the “law of good continuance” and the
“law of closure.” These laws provided a concrete way to think about the brain’s
innate tendency to see “whole” patterns within sets of smaller discrete parts,
whether through proximity, similarity, or directionality. While Gestalt psychology
deals primarily with static two-dimensional patterns it is important to remember
that sketching is a 2D pattern of a 3D representation.

Fig. 8
In 1877 Eadweard Muybridge sequentially
photographed horses in motion to prove a bet
wagered by Leland Stanford that all four hooves of
a horse were off the ground when it was in full
gallop. When placed in a zoetrope (or in his own
invention, the zoopraxiscope) his photographs
anticipated motion pictures, yet no one could
explain why until the Gestaltists began their
experiments decades later.
28

Fig. 9
Gestalt Laws include:

1 2 3

Proximity: objects that are close tend to be Similarity: objects that are similar are related. Good Continuation: objects that suggest
grouped together. movement are related.

4 5 6

Closure: objects that suggest a shape are viewed Prägnanz: reality is organized or reduced to the Figure and Ground: images tend to break down
as closed. simplest form possible. into either figures or aspects of the landscape
they are part of (see p. 41).

J.J. Gibson’s theories of dynamic interaction

J.J. Gibson, an American psychologist, began his academic career at Smith
College in Massachusetts, where the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka was
teaching after fleeing Nazi Germany. While Gibson embraced and admired the
work of the Gestaltists, he soon developed his own theories focused less on static
imagery and vision and more on the dynamic interactions between humans and
animals and their natural surroundings. This was partially inspired by work he did
during World War II while developing training films for fighter pilots; an
experience that made him acutely aware of the challenges faced by pilots who
had to interpret the landscape quickly so as to make split-second decisions.
Gibson began to develop what he termed an ecological approach to visual
perception, pushing the psychology of vision past the static pattern-detection of
the Gestaltists into the new and more dynamic realm of motion.
Some of Gibson’s theories are especially powerful when it comes to
understanding sketching. His concept of the texture gradient provides a
psychological explanation for how our brains perceive the real space Renaissance
artists had become so expert at representing on flat picture planes. Humans
decipher space based on depth cues, and the texture gradient is similar in a sense
to the orthogonals and transversals employed by artists such as Piero della
Francesca and Paolo Uccello to suggest accurate depth perception. A simple
Fig. 10
Gibson’s central concerns involve our ability to example can be seen in the photographs (fig. 10), which represent typical paving
read the environment around us as having patterns found in many old European centers or marketplaces. The texture
structure. These photographs are examples of
created by the patterns creates what Gibson called a texture gradient, and signals
texture gradients, surface details that allow animals
or humans to pick up real information from their to our brains that the smaller the stones, the further away they must be. According
environment—judging distance, for example, or to Gibson, the brain “picks up” this information and perceives it as distance cues.
even seeking out places of shelter from predators.
Fig. 11 (opposite page) shows a simple 3D convexity modeled in Rhino. The
view is slowly rotated into a position parallel to the eye; notice how the convexity
appears to flatten out as it is rotated. The brain constantly assesses information as
we move or as objects in the environment move: if the convexity were an enemy
bunker a pilot would need to be at a lower vantage point to detect it. Rendering
utilizes the gradient effect to deceive the eye into perceiving volume on a flat
image plane (paper or computer screen).
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 29

Two other critical concepts from Gibson’s work are shape invariance and optical Fig. 11
occlusion. On page 26, the letter “E” was shown from various vantage points to These 3D models of simple bumps (convex forms)
were created to demonstrate the challenges
illustrate shape variation. This recognition of known objects remains invariant in Gibson observed for pilots flying over a landscape.
our brains, thus overruling vision so that a table remains a table despite where we When viewed from directly overhead as in the last
are positioned in relation to it in space (fig. 12). This is the brain’s way of being model the convexity flattens out much like a hill or
valley might from 30,000 feet. Shade and shadow
efficient with resources. If our brains understand the invariance of objects they can help to define form and its relationship to ground.
certainly be of assistance in imaging what something might look like when viewed
from different angles when sketching. Again, it all comes down to rules.
Optical occlusion refers to the phenomenon whereby the edges of an
object that are not viewable by the eye are still understood by the brain to exist.
The skilled designer learns to “sketch through” objects as if they were transparent
in order to accurately place critical edges or geometry and ground the objects on
a common plane relative to each other. Sketching only those parts of an object
that are viewable to the eye adds to the designer’s work because, paradoxically,
more of the information has to be guessed at.

Fig. 12
Shape invariance is the ability to recognize
objects as similar regardless of the vantage point.
A table viewed from two floors above or from a
chair directly opposite is still recognized as a table
despite the differences projected on to the retina.
This cognitive ability to recognize the general in
the specific is crucial to good sketching as it
simulates flexibility of vision.
30

Sketching occluded edges and surfaces hidden by other objects or surfaces is

easier on the brain and faster on the body or hand. Computer modeling programs
have a setting to turn on these occluded (hidden) edges to make it easier for a
designer to work (see fig. 13 below). These occluded edges become the ghost
lines of quick sketching (see chapter 7).
Gibson’s ideas have been questioned now that imaging technologies exist
that make it possible for physicians and scientists to actually watch the brain watch
the world. Nevertheless his work, accomplished at a time when technology could
not probe our consciousness at a neural level to map the actual firing of synapses,
contributed much to how we think about vision and cognition. His attention to
the importance of surface gradients alone provides the designer with a clearer
understanding of rendering’s power to capture the imagination.

Fig. 13
Hidden lines in CAD programs are typically
represented with a lighter line weight to suggest
that they would normally be obscured from view.

Fig. 14
Occlusion is the brain’s ability to know that edges
and lines do not disappear just because we can’t
see them. “Sketching through” objects as if they
are transparent is an accurate way to visualize and
ground objects.
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 31

But perhaps Gibson’s greatest contribution to design remains his concept

of affordances, the result of his ecological approach to vision. Don Norman,
author of The Design of Everyday Things, worked with Gibson and prefers the
term perceived affordance. He defines it as the “actionable properties between
the world and an actor (a person or animal).” To Gibson, affordances are a
relationship. They are a part of nature: they do not have to be visible.” In the world
of designed objects they “afford” the user the ability to lift up a cup (a handle)
or raise the volume (a button). The manner in which our brains interpret the world
of objects is essential to the way in which we represent objects.

Fig. 15
The photographs show serving plates designed by
Crucial Detail. They clearly communicate their
underlying structure and form through the power
of gradients. The wireframe from an earlier
iteration of the serving plate shows the power a
gridded set of contour lines has to represent a
similar form without any gradients. When the two
powerful tools, line and rendering, are combined
the brain is very easily convinced that what it is
seeing is three-dimensional. Quick sketching relies
on both these skills. It also relies on the ability to
imagine form from a variety of angles and “draw
through” an object, or imagine the “occluded”
edges that remain hidden by other objects or
surfaces, such as the back edges on the wireframe.
Photographs by Lara Kastner.
32

Irving Biederman: recognition by components

Irving Biederman is a neuroscientist working on human vision and artificial
intelligence (AI). Whereas Gibson focuses heavily on reading and comprehending
surfaces, Biederman is more concerned with an underlying set of shared
structures. His recognition-by-components theory, while largely discredited,
remains very useful as a metaphor for sketching and thinking about form more
generally. The idea is quite elemental: a group of idealized geometric shapes
(known as geons—short for geometrical icons) are stored in the brain for
comparison with what we see in the world. Geons comprise an efficient library
(36 in all) of simple shapes such as cubes, cylinders, and cones which, combined,
can create millions of recognizable objects. The quick sketch of a water bottle
below (fig. 16) relies on a geon approach: the main body is cylindrical, the bottom
surface is partially spherical, and the transition from the main body to the neck is
also partially spherical, while the top of the neck and the cap are cylindrical.

Fig. 16
(Right) This sketch of a water bottle has been
created using a series of geometrical shapes.

Fig. 17
(Below) According to Biederman’s recognition by
components theory, this US fire hydrant is actually
the intersection of several basic geons: sphere,
cylinder, truncated cone, polyhedron, cube, etc.
The illustration demonstrates the process of
intersecting these forms to arrive at the composite
we all recognize as a fire hydrant. This process of
intersection commonly occurs in computer-aided
design and involves Boolean operation.
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 33

GEONS

1 2

3 4

OBJECTS

3 3

2
In a seminal paper on geon theory Biederman wrote: “Three striking and
fundamental characteristics of human object recognition are its invariance with
changes in viewpoint, its ability to operate on unfamiliar objects, its robustness
in the face of occlusion or noise, and its speed, subjective ease, and automaticity.”
Notice that the terms invariance and occlusion, to which he has added robustness, 5
speed, subjective ease, and automaticity, remain critical components to his 3
theory. Neuroscientist Kevin O’Regan, commenting on Biederman’s research,
writes: “What I have added… is the suggestion that ‘seeing’ does not involve
simultaneously perceiving all the features present in an object, but only a very
small number, just sufficient to accomplish the task in hand.” This last idea is 5
perhaps the most critical to good sketching as it’s an exploratory process without
a clear end result. Designers need to be flexible and open to opportunities that
might emerge in response to their own initial first marks placed on the page.
They need to tolerate the ambiguity that comes with probing or, as O’Regan 3

points out, not perceiving everything at once. Biederman’s geon theory is a great
model for quick “bottom-up” sketching approaches, working from simple shapes
and adding or subtracting from them to arrive at more refined ideas—much as a
computer builds basic models around rules or descriptions (primitives). Such
strategies will be explored in greater depth (chapter 6, Shape Morphologies; 4
chapter 8, Exploring Forms in Space).
3

Fig. 18
Biederman’s illustration of the geon theory
(redrawn) from his co-authored paper “Geon
Theory as an Account of Shape Recognition in
Mind, Brain, and Machine” (1993).
34

Drawing on both sides of the brain

Educator and author Betty Edwards wrote her influential book Drawing on The
Right Side of The Brain 30 years ago, drawing on research from cognitive scientist
Roger Sperry’s work with split-brain patients suffering severe epilepsy. One of
Sperry’s key insights was that the left side of the brain controls the right side of
the body while the right side of the brain controls the left side. Sperry described
the left side as the rational/verbal side and the right side is more intuitive and
adept at processing spatial/temporal information. Edwards believed strongly that
her drawing students could shift from what she called the L-Mode to the R-Mode
and in the process free themselves from the natural tendency to logically identify
(verbalize) what they were looking at: to see the world rather than name it.
Edwards’ book was intended for artists observing and recording their world
as opposed to designers tasked with envisioning a world not yet in existence,
who, as a result, need to access both sides of the brain (rational/verbal and
spatial/temporal). The juggling that has to occur between these acts gets to the
heart of what design sketching is all about. Let’s look more closely at what current
neuroscience can tell us about cognition and vision.

Recognition

One of the first things to understand about human perception is that the eye
can focus on only a very small fraction of the world. When we look out into our
environment everything appears to be crystal clear when in fact our eyes are only
focusing on a very narrow sliver of reality (approximately 2–3 percent). The brain
focuses on an “as needed basis” to make resource allocation as efficient as
possible, and does this so quickly that we are unaware of it.

2-3
180

Fig. 19 Not only is our focused view of the world highly reduced, it is inherently flat.
It is a common misconception that the world is When we look out into the world we are viewing what cognitive scientist Colin
entirely in focus at all times. The reality is that the
world is out of focus until we specifically choose Ware calls the “image plane,” which is equivalent to a photograph or painting
something to focus on. The 2-3° cone that we rather than a truly three-dimensional world. The dimensionality of this plane is
can focus when directed at an object like a tennis restricted to the up-and-down and side-to-side axes—height and width. In order
ball is just enough to compete effectively while
using precious resources sparingly. to really understand depth or what is referred to as the “toward and away” axis,
we need to crane our necks or physically move our bodies, which is far slower and
less efficient than moving our eyes from side to side or up and down. According
to Colin Ware our brains are ten to a hundred times more efficient at interpreting
information along the “up/down” and “side to side” axes than the “toward and
away” axis. Vision, in other words, is very much like looking through Alberti’s
window (see p. 18).
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 35
up

left
right

down

Fig. 20
The image plane is similar to the view created by
a camera. In actual vision our eyes tend to scan
along these axes, moving up and down and from
side to side, as opposed to the less efficient
process of moving physically or craning our necks
to change our vantage point. The challenge of
this more efficient approach is to detect the
boundaries and edges of discrete objects or
people, and successfully extract them from
their background.

Fig. 21
Here, the same photograph is used to reveal the
complexity of deciphering discrete objects in
space—something we humans do every second
of our waking day. For the normally sighted person
it is not a challenge to distinguish the individuals
from the buildings and each other, even though
they overlap and intersect: the brain is “binding”
together the individual outlines that define people
and objects in space.

Ware writes: “There is no such thing as an object embedded in an image; there

are just patterns of light, shade, color, and motion. Objects and patterns must be
discovered and binding is essential because it is what makes disconnected pieces
of information into connected pieces of information.” Binding, simply put, is the
neuronal process that leads first to very low-level pattern detection, which is
processed into higher forms of pattern recognition before ultimately leading to
a comparison process with the information already stored in our brains. When
we are looking specifically for something those patterns will stand out, essentially
calling our attention to them—priming our vision. And conversely those things
in our path that we are not interested in simply disappear. As Ware points out:
“in some ways, pattern finding is the very essence of visual thinking… to perceive
a pattern is to solve a problem.” Seeing, like sketching, is about creating
meaningful patterns that communicate easily.
36

The patterns that eventually come to form recognizable objects first enter the eye
as light signals (electromagnetic radiation) which are converted by an array of
photoreceptors (transducers in the form of rods, cones, and ganglion cells) into
the beginning of a chain of biological processes which will allow them to travel via
the optic nerve back to the primary visual cortex located at the very back of the
brain. The optic nerve, however, is a relatively small pathway so the incoming
signals have to be spatially encoded or compressed before being sent via the
ganglion cells to the primary visual cortex. This compression process, which
occurs in the retina, involves enhancing the edges of the object, much like
photomanipulation software might sharpen or enhance the edges of a shape
or region in a photograph.
Once in the primary visual cortex the signals move up two separate
pathways referred to as the ventral and dorsal streams (also known as the “what”
and “where” pathways). It is in these streams that the biological signals work
together to identify objects in space through being either excited or inhibited.
Fig. 22 The process is a quick but incremental one with the initial inputs moving through
The signals travelling back to the brain from the
eye are translated from light (electromagnetic
the visual areas along the ventral stream to arrive at spots deeper inside the brain.
radiation) into biological processes, thus setting up The “what” and “where” pathways move across both sides of the brain.
a chain of events that are progressively interpreted The rapid detection of patterns and subsequent comparison to stored information
into ever finer patterns in sections of the primary
visual cortex.
in the “what” pathway is so fast as to be imperceptible. The “where” pathway,
on the other hand, is more concerned with helping direct the body in specific
actions such as reaching, swinging, or sketching. Knowing when to close the hand
around a desired object when picking it up off a table may seem mindless but a
somatosensory
cortex tremendous amount of machinery is in place to make this feel effortless. Sketching
posterior parietal cortex
(spatial association area)
might best be thought of as “seeing in reverse” because the process involves
primary motor slowly putting down provisional marks, making sense of them, and responding
cortex by adding to, subtracting from, or refining them to finally create recognizable
“where”
pathway patterns. Even the experienced designer with good sketching skills exerts a great
deal of mental energy to shape thought based on quick and provisional marks in
order to build meaning where there is currently none.

Ambiguity
primary
visual cortex
Good ambiguity is intentional
“what” pathway
Ambiguity is related to fidelity in many ways. Good ambiguity is intentional and
inferior temporal lobe
(visual association area) works like a good low fidelity sketch: it focuses the conversation on a sketch’s
many possible interpretations as opposed to its final resolution, which is typically
a middle- or high fidelity sketch or rendering. The right amount of ambiguity
Fig. 23
The “what” and “where” pathways, also known as allows even the designer to see possibilities that may not have been intended.
the dorsal and ventral streams, are where objects The competent quick sketch is read as an idea in motion rather than a fully
and space are distinguished in a progressively finer
resolved idea. The sketches opposite (fig. 24) from Cooper and Associates are
set of processes that build on each other to
determine the contours of objects and space. quick, low-fidelity sketches intended to spark conversation around high-level
The pathways are critical to recognition, but also possibilities, as opposed to conversation around final form factors, color,
to committing an action like reaching for a knob
materiality, etc. The sketches shown in fig. 25 are slightly higher fidelity sketches
or lifting a pen to sketch.
intended to convey initial ideas of how a product might work and even look.
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 37

Fig. 24
Quick low-fidelity sketches from Cooper and
Associates, designed to initiate discussion of
a new product, demonstrate how human
perception can “complete” the most basic
sketches and draw meaning from them.

Fig. 25
This series of sketches is a more refined version
of the diagrammatic thumbnail sketches shown
above, looking at the product in greater detail.
38

Bad ambiguity is accidental

Bad ambiguity is more of an accident and occurs when the designer still lacks
the knowledge to sketch in a way that maximizes readability without minimizing
possibility. Bad ambiguity tends to come down to mechanics, and how we see
and interpret drawings. This type of ambiguity has a long history in the annals
of psychology because of the limitations inherent in representing the three-
dimensional world on a flat two-dimensional surface. Psychologists have studied
visual ambiguity to better understand vision and cognition, and comprehending
some of the standard pitfalls and how they “work” on the brain tells us a lot about
good sketching. The Penrose triangle (fig. 26), referred to as an unstable or
impossible image, is a classic case in point. It is a visual paradox similar to verbal
paradoxes like Oscar Wilde’s quote “I can resist anything except temptation.”
Wilde may have wished to appear clever but the actual meaning of what he said
refuses to close or be grounded, much like the Penrose triangle.

An overview of classic forms

A good place to begin reviewing bad ambiguity is with the classic forms named
after the scientists who developed them, such as the Kopfermann cube, the
Necker cube, the Ponzo illusion, and the Rubin vase.
Herta Kopfermann worked with the original Gestalt pioneers: Wertheimer,
Koffka, and Köhler in the 1930s. His cube (fig. 27) illustrates the fact that
continuous lines will be read two-dimensionally while corners created by two
intersecting lines will be read three-dimensionally. The continuous lines in this
case are the front top edges and back bottom edges of the cube, which are
co-linear and therefore read as existing on the same plane thus flattening the
drawing out. There is no differentiation between the foreground and
background—another crucial Gestalt principle. Additionally, the front top corner
(circled in red) is overlapping with the back lower corner, thus flattening the
drawing further. The object’s symmetry causes it to hover between a flat
geometric form and a three-dimensional cube.
The Necker cube (fig. 28)—named for the Swiss naturalist Louis Albert
Necker, who first published the image in 1832—is also considered an unstable
image. Due to the parallel set of lines/edges, the symmetry, and the lack of
line-weight differentiation, the cube has a tendency to move forward and
backward the longer it is viewed. The symmetry is more complex than
Kopfermann’s cube, consisting of two different sets of shapes that rotate around
a central axis, but the instability is still present. The lack of receding lines and
variation in the line weights contributes greatly to the object being ungrounded.
By applying color to the corners or filling in the front plane, ambiguity is reduced.

Fig. 26
Correcting the Penrose triangle merely requires
reorienting the correct edges to each other. Some
of the impossible drawings for which the Dutch
artist M.C. Escher is famous come out of similar
manipulations.
Chapter 2 The Psychology of Sketching 39

Fig 27
Strong symmetry (like that in the Kopfermann
cube, shown here) can deceive the eye/mind
into seeing flat shapes—in this case, a hexagon
with six wedges. With the addition of color
and line-weight differentiation to suggest a
light source, the flatness is removed along with
the ambiguity.
Front top edge in direct
alignment with bottom
back edge Front top edge in direct
alignment with bottom
back edge

Front top corner overlaps

with lower back corner

Front vertical edge in

direct alignment with
back vertical edge

Fig. 28
The axis of symmetry for the Necker cube is
rotated at a 45-degree angle (illustration in red).
This, combined with a lack of receding lines and
no differentiation in line weight, creates an image
which is difficult to locate in space. Highlighting
the corners or darkening a plane adds greater
stability and thus makes the image easier to read.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
passed a small farm-village where all the field-labourers were at
work, we had to cross a very extensive forest, and I became greatly
exhausted. Having passed about noon several villages, which proved
to be all slave-villages with the exception of one, which contained a
lord’s mansion of neat appearance, suddenly the character of the
country changed entirely, and we came to a wide depression or
hollow, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet deep,
which, winding round on our left, formed a fine green vale, bordered
on the other side by a picturesque cone[79] rising abruptly, and
forming on the east side a wooded terrace, while on the west it
displayed a steep bare rocky bank of horizontal strata, and on this
side, after a small interruption, a low ridge attached to it encircling
the hollow on all sides.
Having reached the south-eastern foot of the cone by a gradual
ascent, we obtained a view over the varied and rich scenery before
us, a luxuriant mass of vegetation broken at intervals by
comfortable-looking little hamlets, and bounded in the distance by a
cone stretching out to a great length. Having crossed a small
watercourse, and wound along between erractic blocks of granite,
scattered about in wild disorder, and interrupted, wherever the
ground offered a small level, by rich crops of grain, we reached the
first hamlet of this most picturesque locality. It is one of the chief
seats of the Démsa, or rather comprises two distinct villages,
namely, Démsa-Póha and Démsa-Mésu.
 It was indeed a most charming sight when we made our way
along a broad well-trodden path, surrounded on both sides by neatly
fenced clusters of large huts, encompassed by waving corn and
picturesque clusters of trees. Thus we reached the “lamórde,” the
residence of the governor, which is situated at a short distance from
the southern foot of the large granitic cone; but he was absent,
having gone on an expedition against the Fúri, an independent
pagan tribe in the neighbourhood, and we had to wait some time
before his servants undertook to assign us quarters, when we had to
retrace our steps to the southern part of the village. It was half-past
four in the afternoon when, feverish and extremely weak as I was, I
at length found rest, but while reclining at full length in a cool shade,
I listened with delight to Íbrahíma’s chat, who, in order to cheer my
spirits, gave me an account of that famous expedition to the far
south which the Fúlbe of Ádamáwa undertook a few years ago, and
to which I have already alluded.
This memorable campaign having proceeded from Búbanjídda,
none of the people of Ádamáwa, whose acquaintance I was able to
make during my short stay in the country, had participated in it, so
that all the accounts which I received of it were extremely vague.
The expedition, after a march of almost two months, is said to have
reached an unbounded expanse of unbroken plain, and, having kept
along it for a day or two, to have arrived at an immense tree, in the
shade of which the whole host found sufficient room. Here they
found two natives of the southern regions, who informed them that
they were the subjects of a powerful queen that resided in a vast
town of two days’ march in circumference. These people, they say,
were of short stature, and wore long beards. Frightened by these
reports, and by the waterless tract before them, the expedition
retraced their steps. Similar reports with regard to a very powerful
female sovereign towards the south are also current in Bagirmi and
all the adjacent country; but I am not able to determine whether
they originate in faint rumours, spread so far north, of the powerful
kingdom of Muata-ya-Nvo, or—of Queen Victoria.
 To my great satisfaction, we were obliged to stay here the next
day, in order to await the arrival of the lámido, when, feeling greatly
recruited by a good night’s and half-a-day’s rest, I crept out of my
well-polished round little clay hut in the afternoon, and, crossing the
neatly fenced promenade of the straggling village, ascended a
neighbouring eminence formed by an irregular mass of granite
blocks, to the north of our quarters. Here I spent two delicious hours
in the tranquil contemplation of the picturesque scenery, which I
thought the most interesting I had yet seen in this quarter of the
world. The view I took presents but a very faint idea of its peculiar
features; but I hope it will give some conception of the nature of this
country in general, which enables the pagan natives between this
district and Hamárruwa to defend their liberty and independence
against the Mohammedan intruders. These tribes are, after the
Démsa, who seem to form a tolerably numerous body, first, the
Mbulá, probably the same who have given their name to the place
situated at some distance from Mount Míndif, and mentioned above;
then, further west, or north-west, the Báchama, and still further
west the Tángalé, with both of whom Mr. Vogel, on his recent
journey from Yákuba to Hamárruwa, has come in contact.
Tuesday, July 1.—We made a short but highly interesting march to
the place of our old friend the Mʿallem Delíl. The scenery was rich
and beautiful, the crops of Guinea-corn standing from four to five
feet high, alternating with fields where góza, a kind of yams, were
grown, and adorned with fine spreading trees, amongst which the
tármu and the kúka or monkey-bread-tree predominated; even the
rocky eminences were all overgrown with fresh vegetation. We then
passed a sort of shallow river, or sél, which is called by the Kanúri
“ngáljam,” and forms a characteristic feature of Démsa, while on our
right it expanded to a conspicuous sheet of water, bordered by
blocks and masses of rocks full of vegetation. It was overgrown with
rank reed at the spot where we crossed it.
Only a few minutes beyond this almost stagnant water on green
meadow-land, we crossed the broad and clear torrent of the Máyo
Tíyel, rushing ahead over a gravelly bottom, and at times rolling
along a considerable quantity of water. According to my guides, it is
formed by three branches, one issuing from Báses towards the
north-east, the other coming from the neighbourhood of Bélem, and
the third from the north-west from Bíngel. Only a few hundred yards
further on, we passed on our left another broad sheet of water,
apparently of great depth, which is said to preserve the same level
at all times of the year. It is full of crocodiles, and bordered by the
richest vegetation, and, being apparently quite isolated, has a very
curious appearance. Perhaps it is fed by subterranean sources. It is
surrounded by beautiful pasture-grounds.
We then traversed a fine open country, passing some villages,
while the road was enlivened by a troop of travellers (colonists from
Bórnu), among whom there were some remarkably handsome
women mounted on bullocks, who bore sufficient testimony to the
fact that the more elevated districts of Ádamáwa are salubrious and
favourable for man. We reached Bélem at about two o’clock; but
before we arrived there a circumstance happened which I must not
omit to mention, as it is rather characteristic: for suddenly two of
Mohammed Láwl’s servants appeared with the horse which Bíllama
had sold to the governor for the price of twenty slaves, returning it
under some pretext, but in reality for no other reason than because
he was afraid lest it might operate by way of charm, and injure him.
Bíllama was to have received the slaves in the towns still before us.
We stayed in Bélem this day and the following; and I was pestered
a little by the family of old Mʿallem Delíl, but particularly by his
daughter, rather a handsome person, who had been divorced from
her former husband (I think Mansúr, the younger brother of
Mohammed Láwl), and wanted me by all means to write her a charm
to get her another husband after her heart’s desire. She was a very
passionate sort of woman, and when smelling, against my wish,
from my phial of hartshorn, was seized with such violent
convulsions, that she was carried senseless out of my tent, and
remained in this state for nearly an hour. The stay here was the
more disagreeable to me as it was caused partly by the trading
propensities of my servant Bú-Sʿad; and not only did he buy ivory,
which he had the insolence to add to the loads of my weak camels,
but even three slaves, so that I was obliged to dismiss him instantly
from my service, although I had nothing wherewith to pay him off. It
is extremely difficult for a single European to proceed in these
countries with hired servants, as he loses all control over them. This
man, who had been the late Mr. Richardson’s servant as well as
mine, turned out like Mukni, Mr. Richardson’s interpreter, a great
slave-dealer, and in 1855, when I was leaving Central Africa,
collected a numerous gang of slaves in this very country, which he
had before visited as my servant.
Thursday, July 3.—We at length resumed our journey, but only to
reach Saráwu Beréberé, where we took up our quarters in the
comfortable courtyard which I have described on our outward
journey. I will only record the pleasing fact, that, as soon as the
news spread in the town of my having returned, a man whom I had
cured of disease during my former stay brought me a handsome
gazelle-skin as an acknowledgment.
The next day we followed our ancient road by Badaníjo, and
reached Segéro; but on Saturday, after having passed Mbutúdi
without any other delay than that of buying with beads a little milk
from our Fúlbe friends, we took a more easterly path, which brought
us to Múglebú, a village which exhibited to us an interesting picture
of the exuberance that reigns in these regions at this time of the
year. The huts were scarcely visible, on account of the rich crops of
grain which surrounded them on all sides, while Palma Christi
formed thick clusters of bushes, and a few specimens of a
remarkable tree which I had never observed before, besides isolated
bananas, rose above the rich mass of vegetation, and gave to the
whole the charm of novelty; but the weather was so wet that I could
make but a very slight sketch, and was wholly prevented from
rambling about, the rain continuing the whole of the afternoon.
Besides, all my energy was required to assist my three servants, who
were all severely ill; and while I administered to two of them
emetics, I had to soothe ʿAbdallah with a dose of laudanum. It was
very fortunate indeed that I myself felt a little better. In short, our
stay here was anything but agreeable, and I was worried by several
people with demands which exceeded my power—such as to drive
out devils, relieve impotency, and so on; but the mayor sent me a
goat, fowls, milk, and a little butter. The village, which consisted of
about two hundred huts, seemed to be in good circumstances.
Sunday, July 6.—When we started at a tolerably early hour in the
morning, the weather was clear and favourable; but after we had
crossed the little mountain-chain which surrounds the village of
Múglebú at some distance to the east and north, and reached a
small hamlet presenting signs of very careful cultivation, and
numerous herds of cattle, we were drenched by a heavy shower. It
is generally supposed that storms in the tropical climes break forth in
the afternoon, or in the course of the night—and this certainly is the
general rule; but if there has been a storm the day before, or during
the night, and the weather has not cleared up, there can be no
certainty that it will not come on again in the course of the morning.
It is rather a rare phenomenon in these regions for a storm to gather
in the morning on a clear sky; but nevertheless several examples
even of this will be found in my meteorological tables. The natives
are not at all insensible to rain; and while the Kánembú who had
attached themselves to our caravan in Badaníjo were protecting their
persons with their light wooden shields, the natives of the country
collected thick bushes, and formed a sort of natural umbrella over
their heads. To protect the head at least from wet is most essential
in these climes. On another occasion, when I come to speak about
the prevailing kinds of disease, I shall have to mention how
dreadfully the Fulbe sometimes suffer from the maladies of the rainy
season, when employed on their warlike expeditions.
Early in the morning we reached Múfi or Múbi, but were received
so inhospitably that we had great difficulty in obtaining quarters, for
which we were obliged to keep fighting the whole day, as a
quarrelsome mʿallem wished to dislodge me from the hut of which I
had taken possession. Fortunately his better half bore the
inconvenience with more equanimity; and I put up cheerfully with
the little trouble which she gave me from time to time by calling at
the door and begging me to hand to her some little articles of her
simple household furniture. My three people were so sick that they
lay like so many corpses on the ground; and their condition
prevented us from setting out even the following day,
notwithstanding the inhospitable manner in which we were treated
here, so that I had ample leisure to study minutely the architecture
of my residence, of which I subjoin a ground-plan.
The hut, measuring
about twelve feet in
diameter, was built in
the manner most usual
in these regions—
namely, of clay walls,
with a thatched roof.
The door, a little
elevated above the
floor, was three feet
high, and fifteen inches
wide, and not at all
adapted for very stout
persons. From the wall
at the right of the door
(a) ran another wall, “gáruwel súdo,” of the same height, but
unconnected with the roof, right across the hut in an oblique line, to
the length of about six feet, separating one part of the dwelling, and
securing to it more privacy. In this compartment was the bed (c),
consisting of a frame made of branches, and spread over pilasters of
clay about three feet high. In the most sequestered part of the hut,
in the corner formed by the round enclosing wall and the oblique
one, at the top of the bed—“kéla kagá,” as the Kanúri say—stood the
corn-urn (a), about six feet high, and, in its largest part, two feet
wide, destined to keep a certain provision of corn always at hand;
besides this, there was a smaller one (fe) at the foot of the bed
—“shí kagá.” At the side of this smaller urn were two small pedestals
of clay (g), serving the purpose of a sideboard, in order to place
upon them pots or other articles. Then followed the kitchen,
“defforíde” (h), still under cover of the oblique wall, but exactly on a
line with it, so that the smoke might more easily find its way through
the door, and consisting of a narrow place enclosed on each side by
a low wall, to protect the fire, between which three stones, or rather
small clay mounds like fire-bricks, supported the cooking-pot, while
a small wooden footstool (i) accommodated the industrious landlady
when busy with her most important culinary employment. While to
all this part of the hut a certain degree of privacy was secured by
the oblique wall, a considerable space to the left of the door
remained unprotected; and here stood the large water-urn (j),
which, always remaining in its place, is filled by means of smaller
portable urns or pitchers.

Tuesday, July 8.—It seemed almost as if we were destined to stay

another day in this place; for just when we were about to start, a
most violent shower came down, and lasted full two hours. When at
length we were able to set out on our road to Úba, it was
excessively wet, the streams greatly swollen, and the weather still
anything but bright and clear. At Úba, again, we remained much
longer than I wished. In the evening, after our arrival, the governor
went on an expedition against the Kílba-Gáya. Falling suddenly upon
the poor pagans at early dawn, he captured a good many slaves; but
the persecuted natives rallied, and, taking advantage of a defile
through which he had to pass on his return to his residence,
suddenly attacked him, and succeeded in rescuing all their
countrymen from the hands of their relentless enemies. During my
absence the corn had almost ripened; and the fields afforded a
spectacle of the utmost exuberance. Almost all the grain here is
sorghum, and mostly of the white kind; the average height of the
stalks was from nine to ten feet. The whole area of the town was
clothed in the richest vegetation, of great variety, where a botanist
might have made a numerous collection.
Thursday, July 10.—Íbrahíma, the principal of the two men whom
Mohammed Láwl had appointed to escort me to the frontier of his
province, accompanied me a short distance when we left Úba. This
man, who, perhaps because he was not well treated in Kúkawa,
behaved rather sullenly on our journey to Ádamáwa, had become
infinitely more amiable after the governor of that country had sent
me back. He not only manifested on every occasion his heartfelt
sorrow on account of my having been disappointed in the
expectation of travelling over that interesting country in every
direction, but he still more lamented that his countrymen had been
deprived, by the imprudence of their ruler, of the advantage of my
presence in the country. I have had occasion to observe repeatedly,
that there is a great deal of republican spirit in Fúlbe, and that they
have in general the air and manners of freeborn men, though I shall
have to dwell upon the deterioration of this original character in the
case of the inhabitants of Sókoto.
The commencement of our march through the unsafe and infested
boundary-district from Úba northward was not very auspicious; and I
was almost afraid lest, after having been allowed to reach the
frontier unmolested, we were doomed to some insidious treachery in
these lawless lands. The original arrangement was, that some other
people should succeed to Íbrahíma, in order to see me safe to
Íssege; but they never made their appearance, and we had scarcely
parted from Íbrahíma when all sorts of alarms frightened and
disturbed our little band. First a dreadful noise was heard from
above the rocks at the foot of which lay our road; but it was found
to proceed only from a countless multitude of birds of prey enjoying
their liberty in noisy mirth. Then, when we reached the fields of corn
within this rocky passage, which on our outward journey we had
seen under cultivation, we were prevented by armed men from
passing through them, and were obliged to make a long circuit. A
little further on, people came running after us, and attempted to
take away by force two of the slaves whom some of our companions
were leading along; and when resisted, they raised a dismal cry for
help, which was heard resounding to a great distance through the
wild country. Serious quarrels seemed imminent; but fortunately no
one came to their assistance.
About thirty travellers, all of them armed either with spears or
with bows and arrows, had attached themselves to our troop. I got
ready all my cartridges; and we were well on our guard. We had
advanced about five miles from Úba, and were in the middle of the
forest, when a more serious alarm arose, several people being seen
lurking among the trees,—an unmistakable proof that they
meditated an attack, if we should exhibit any signs of weakness. We
therefore rallied a moment, and formed in front, the most sturdy of
our spearmen gathering round me, and begging me to take steady
aim when they should point out to me the chief men. But the
natives, belonging most probably to the tribe of the Báza, who
always infest this road, seeing that we were prepared to receive
them, did not dare to quit their ambush; and having continued
awhile along the path, we thought it wiser to leave it, and struck off
to the west into the thickest covert of the wood, where the camels
with their luggage had some difficulty in passing through, especially
as the soil was cracked and rent in all directions. Having trudged on
in this way for about two hours, and feeling sure that we were not
pursued, we returned to the path, but left it again about noon, and,
pursuing another track, reached Laháula, a village of unlucky
memory, on the western side. But this time we were well received,
not only by ʿAisha, but also by his wild and passionate son, who
became a great friend of mine, and, having received from me a
present of a knife, brought me three fowls in return, while his father
sent túwo for all my people. I sketched the danísko, or handbill of
my friend, which was of a peculiarly regular shape.
 Friday, July 11.—On leaving Laháula in the
morning, we again preferred the covert to the
beaten path; but after we had gone round Kófa,
which Bíllama thought it better to avoid, we
returned to our well-known road parallel to the river
and the mountain-chain beyond, and reached
Íssege without any accident, early in the afternoon.
There, too, my reception was very different from
that which I had experienced on my going; and I
was received with the utmost kindness and
hospitality into the house of a wealthy family at the
northern end of the village, and quartered in a neat
little hut, the walls of which consisted of thatch, like
the roof, but were plastered over with clay. The little hut, which
scarcely measured seven feet in diameter, contained two couches,
one raised above the ground to the right, and the other on the level
of the ground on the left of the entrance. Three spears, a common
shield, and a large shield called “chággo” by the Marghí, “kutufáni”
by the Kanúri, consisting of a thick texture of reed, and big enough
to protect two or three persons, a basket and a net, “úturu,” hanging
from the roof, formed the furniture of this little dwelling, which was
the apartment of the youngest son of the family, a fine, tall, and
slender young man, with a very pleasant expression of countenance.
Except that he wore the “funó,” a small leathern apron, round his
waist, he was quite naked, but loaded with coquettish ornaments.
Round his neck he wore a double string of red beads, a little lower
another set of three strings of corals, and still lower again a set of
two strings of iron beads; on his left shoulder he wore four broad
iron rings, or “kégelá;” on his elbow two other narrow iron rings
(barachággo) very neatly worked like beads; on his wrist six narrow
and one broad iron ring, or “únzo,” and above them an ivory ring, or
“yécho.” The right arm was not so richly endowed with ornaments,
having only four iron rings at the upper part, and two on the wrist.
Below his knee he wore a chain of cotton very neatly twisted—this is
called “shishídderi,”[80]—and on his foot-joint a narrow iron ring
called “míltedo.” However, I observed afterwards, that this young
man did not wear all the national ornaments of his tribe; for I saw
others who wore in addition an iron chain round their loins, which is
called “shushú.” All these iron articles are very neatly made by the
people of Wándalá, Morá being only two days’ march from this; and
I only regret that I was not able to bring some of these articles
home as specimens of the industry of the natives, as well as of the
excellent quality of iron which they possess. This young man did not
wear the “sér,” as they call it, a small reed or feather in the left ear.
I delighted my youthful host by the present of a mirror; and I
gave a knife to his father, when he returned from the labour of the
field. My little hut was not without a crowd of visitors the whole of
the afternoon, all the friends of my host coming to see me. They
were admitted in a regular way, five at a time, and behaved very
decently, while they admired the few curious things which I had to
show them. I was greatly amused by the simplicity of my young host
and one of his brothers, who, when I presented them with small bits
of sugar, gradually nibbled them away, and at the same time
compared their size continually, till they were reduced to very
diminutive morsels, when they agreed between them to give the
remnants to a sister.
The language of these people, which, as I have stated, is
intimately related to that of the Bátta, seems to show that they
belong rather to the family of South African tribes, than to the group
of neighbouring tribes of Central Negroland.
We had plenty of good fare in the evening, the Bórnu titular mayor
of the place sending me a sheep, besides corn for the horses, and
our hosts preparing a fowl for myself, and several dishes of hasty-
pudding, with fish-sauce, for my people. The evening being clear,
and illuminated by splendid moonlight, I sat a long time outside—
perhaps too long in my precarious state of health—enjoying the
sound of music and dancing which came from the opposite quarter
of the village; but I was not a little astonished when I heard from my
young friend, whom I asked why he did not go to join in the
merriment, that it was not an ordinary amusement, but a religious
dance to celebrate the death of an old man; for if a person in old
age dies, his death is deemed a cause of satisfaction and mirth,
while that of a young one is lamented with tears.
I have already noticed some peculiar customs of the Marghí; but I
must say a few words about their curious ordeal on the holy granite
rock of Kóbshi. When two are litigating about a matter, each of them
takes a cock which he thinks the best for fighting; and they go
together to Kóbshi. Having arrived at the holy rock, they set their
birds a-fighting, and he whose cock prevails in the combat is also
the winner in the point of litigation. But more than that, the master
of the defeated cock is punished by the divinity, whose anger he has
thus provoked; and on returning to his village he finds his hut in
flames.
It is evident that this tribe, as well as many of the neighbouring
ones, venerate their forefathers, in which respect they closely
resemble the South African tribes, although the Berbers also seem
originally to have had this sort of worship as well as the Háusa
people. The Marghí do not practise circumcision; but, what seems
very remarkable, they practise inoculation for the small-pox, at least
to a considerable extent.
As I was sitting outside the courtyard, by degrees a great many
natives collected round me, when a young man took me aside and
entreated me earnestly to give him a remedy against the dislike of
people. I, however, soon succeeded in making him confess that he
meant only the dislike of one girl, who, he said, did not relish his
haughty demeanour, and that he was reduced to a state of
desperation, and wished for nothing but to die in battle. This
example shows that even these simple people have some sentiment
of love.
Saturday, July 12.—I had some difficulty in persuading Bíllama to
leave this hospitable place; but I was ashamed to cause these good
people, who had been robbed and despoiled a short time ago by
Kashélla ʿAlí, any more trouble. We took a more easterly path than
that by which we had travelled before, but nearly of the same
character—full of holes and crevices, and covered with thick forest,
while the nutritive root “katakírri” employed the several members of
our caravan continually, particularly a Púllo pilgrim from the far west
near the coast, who was indefatigable in digging as well as in eating.
We had only proceeded a few miles when we met a troop of Marghí,
who were going to perform a sacrifice in the holy grove of Íssege,
one of them carrying a sheep and another a fowl. One of them had
ornamented his shield with red lines, which on the black ground of
the elephant’s hide were quite becoming; but I do not think that this
custom is general; perhaps it had some connection with the
sacrifice.
After a march of eight hours, we
reached the first cluster of huts of the
Northern Molghoy, where we wished to
find quarters; but the unfortunate people,
by the recent exactions and contributions
levied on them by the Kanúri, were driven
to a state of despair, and obstinately
refused to receive us. There remained,
therefore, no alternative but to continue
our march, and to try to reach Yerímarí;
but the effort was too much for me, and
had the worst consequences in my reduced state of health. I was for
some time quite senseless when, after a ride of thirteen hours, I
succeeded in reaching the well-known place, and threw myself flat
upon the ground of my little hut. Scarcely had my luggage arrived,
when a storm, which the whole afternoon had been hanging over
our heads, broke forth, and continued till midnight with unabated
violence.
Man as well as beast was so exhausted that we remained here the
following day, when I felt strength enough to walk out a little into
the fields. There was an extraordinary difference between the
advanced state in which I had left the crops in Ádamáwa and that in
which I found them here. The reader will remember that the fields
round this place were just being sown on the day of my leaving it;
and during the time of my absence rain must have been rather
scanty, so that the crops were scarcely twenty inches above the
ground. In the afternoon, Bíllama, who was always obliging, gave
me some information with regard to the adjacent country.
Monday, July 14.—We continued our march, and, with a halt
during the hot hours, reached Ujé Kasúkulá in the evening. The
aspect of the country offered unmistakable proof of our advance
northwards. Even the grass here was barely an inch or two above
the ground; the crops, where most advanced, were ten or twelve
inches high, while other fields were still covered with the tunfáfia, or
Asclepias gigantea,—a sure proof that they had not yet been
brought under cultivation. We passed a good many cotton-fields. I
reached the place in a state of the utmost exhaustion, and was
obliged to stay here three days to recruit my strength, taking hardly
any food but quinine, and placing a plaster of cantharides on my
chest. The governor of the place, Kashélla ʿAlí Aláwó, treated my
party very hospitably and kindly, and showed sincere compassion for
my feeble condition. I learnt from him, to my great satisfaction, that
Mr. Overweg had really embarked in the boat on the Tsád, and was
gone to the Búdduma.
Friday, July 18.—At length we set out again; but though I felt a
little better, I was glad when, after a short march of three hours
through a very pleasant and populous country, we took up our
quarters in a place called Gúlfo, a great proportion of the inhabitants
of which are Shúwa. Having passed the hot hours in a spacious and
cool hut, I enjoyed for a while the freshness of the evening outside,
in my courtyard, delighted at the same time by the sight of the
herds of cattle returning from their pastures.
Shortly before we reached Gúlfo, we had passed a village entirely
inhabited by Shúwa, and even called Shúwarám.
Though we had now reached the monotonous alluvial plains of
Bórnu proper, yet the following day’s march in the company of my
friend Bíllama, who, after we had become better acquainted, was
anxious to gratify my desire for information in every respect, was
highly interesting. Although the vegetation was very poor in
comparison with that of the more southern districts, yet there was
plenty of underwood, and we observed the small bush called
“kúmkum,” the berries of which taste very like coffee, and which in
reality may be a kind of Coffea. On our right we left a path leading
by Yámaké, Tangállanda, and Kirbáje, to Kabé-Ngáwa, a place
famous on account of its neighbourhood affording the “fógo,”—wood
from which the shields (ngáwa) of the Kánembú are made: it lies on
the road to Díkowa, passing by a place called Ájowa. The spears of
the natives (kasékka) are made from the root of the kindíl or talha,
but the javelin (béllam) from that of the kúrna; the shafts of arrows
are made from the “kabílla”-bush, which hereabouts grows in great
abundance. Cultivated and pasture-ground alternately succeeded
each other, and I was astonished to see that the produce of this
district was exclusively argúm móro, or Pennisetum, while ngáberi,
or Holcus sorghum, is a much more general grain in Bórnu, with the
exception of the country of the Koyám. A little before eleven o’clock
we finished our day’s march in a small village called Múnghono-
Mabé, where I took possession of a large hut constructed in the
peculiar style of the Shúwa, the roof being of an oval shape, without
the characteristic top or head, the “kogí ngímbe,” and supported by
a pole, “dúngulis,” in the middle of the hut, while the thatch is made
in a very irregular and hasty manner, the compactness of wickerwork
being insufficiently supplied by a heap of reeds thrown upon the roof
and fastened with ropes.
Sunday, July 20.—I felt much better; and after a beautiful
moonlight night, we started earlier than usual, “dúnia kéte.” The
morning was very fine; but the sun soon became rather powerful
and troublesome. We passed a considerable pool of stagnant water
surrounded by fine trees, tamarinds, and sycamores, such as in this
district, where stunted mimosas form the predominant feature of the
vegetation, are only seen in very favoured spots; it is called “kúlugu
Hámtigu.” On the path itself also, deeply cut as it was in the sandy
soil, there was a good deal of water. We passed the site of a large
town named Dóngo, which had been destroyed by the Fúlbe or
Felláta some forty years ago, but of which the circumference of the
wall was still visible, the gate being marked by a colossal monkey-
bread-tree or Adansonia, the constant follower of human society,
spreading its gigantic branches out like an immense candelabrum.
Bíllama brought me the berries of a bush called “búlte,” the taste of
which was very much like currants; and further on he presented me
with a “fitó,” a red fruit looking exactly like red pepper, with numbers
of small kernels, and of a somewhat acidulous taste.
We rested a little more than three hours, during the heat of the
day, near a pond of stagnant water, in a district rich in pastures,
where, among numerous herds of the Shúwa, the cattle of Háj
Beshír were also grazing. But the ground hereabouts seemed to be
nothing but one continuous world of ants, which did not allow us a
moment’s undisturbed repose, and even during our short stay they
made several successful attacks not only upon part of our luggage,
but even of my dress.
When we set out again, at an early hour in the afternoon,
numerous pools of water along the road testified to the presence of
the rainy season; and the village Máska, which we passed soon
afterwards, was surrounded with corn and cotton-fields as well as by
rich green pasture-grounds. The path was well frequented. We met
first a horseman of the sheikh sent as a messenger to Ujé, with the
order to call in the numerous horse of that district; and Bíllama was
of opinion that his master had thoughts of arranging the affairs of
Khadéja. Further on we met a troop of Shúwa women, who, in a
mournful song, lamented the death of one of their companions.
They passed us too rapidly to allow the words of their song to be
distinctly heard.
The country on our left, and that on our right, showed a
remarkable contrast; for while, on our left, cornfields, fine pasture-
grounds, and villages succeeded each other, on the right an
immense ghadír, or fírki, still dry, and only sparingly covered here
and there with a little coarse herbage, stretched out to an
immeasurable distance. At an early hour in the afternoon, deviating
a little from the path, we turned into the village of Káliluwá Grémarí,
which belongs to ʿAbd eʾ Rahmán, the second brother of Sheikh
ʿOmár, and found the male inhabitants of the village sitting in the
shade of a chédia or caoutchouc-tree, busily employed in making
wicker-work. However, they proved too clearly that we had entered
the inhospitable zone in the neighbourhood of the capital; observing,
with great coolness, that the sun was as yet high, and would enable
us still to make a good march to some other place, they would hear
nothing of our quartering in their village. But Bíllama was not the
man to be laughed at; and, riding through the midst of them, he
took possession for me of one of the best huts. I could not, in truth,
approve of this despotical mode of dealing; but I was too weak to
run the risk of spending a night in my tent on the damp ground. The
villagers seemed to be drained to the utmost by their gracious lord,
and did not possess a single cow; even fowls were scarcely to be
seen.
In the evening I was greatly amused, at first, by the noisy hum of
a “mákaranchí,” or school, close to my hut, where, round a large fire,
some six or seven boys were repeating, at the highest pitch of their
voices, and with utter disregard of the sense, a few verses of the
Kurán, which in the daytime they had been taught to read by their
master, who, doubtless, understood them as little as the boys
themselves; but by degrees the noise became almost insupportable.
It is generally thought in Europe, that a schoolboy is too much
tormented; but these poor African boys, for the little they learn, are
worried still more—at least, I have often found them in the cold
season, and with scarcely a rag of a shirt on, sitting round a
miserable fire as early as four o’clock in the morning, learning their
lessons. Besides, they have to perform all sorts of menial service for
the master, and are often treated no better than slaves.
Monday, July 21.—The country which we passed in the morning
presented more pasture-grounds than cultivated lands; and after a
little while I turned, with my companion, out of our path, to the left,
towards a small encampment or “berí Shúwabe” of the Kohálemí, a
Shúwa or Arab tribe, where, for three large beads, called “nejúm,”
we bought a little fresh milk. On this occasion I learned from
Bíllama, that the Shúwa or native Arabs settled in the district of Ujé
belong to the tribe of the Sáraji, while the Sugúla and the Sálamát
have their camping-grounds further east.
The country became rather dreary, black “fírki”-ground and sandy
soil alternately succeeding each other; and traffic there was none.
But when we reached the well of Maira, a considerable place which
we passed on our left hand, the path became animated from an
interesting cause, a whole village or “berí” of wandering Arabs
passing through in search of fresh pasture-grounds to the west.
Each mistress of a family was sitting on the top of her best
household furniture, which was carefully packed on the backs of the
cattle, and covered with hides, while a female slave followed her,
sitting astride on the less valuable gear and the poles with pots and
other such utensils; but, distinguished above all by the harness of
her bullock, the neat arrangement of her seat, a leather tent-like
covering over her head, and the stoutness of her own person, sat
the wife of the chief. Most of these women, however, were rather
slender than otherwise, testifying to the sound and well-preserved
national taste of these Arabs. They never veil the face, and their
dress is simple and decent; but they are not nearly so tidy as the
Fulfúlde ladies. Most of the men followed at a great distance with
the flocks of goats and sheep.
When this interesting procession had passed by, the monotony of
the country was more intensely felt. The proud Kanúri of the towns
mock the inhabitants of these districts, who have nothing but a few
cattle and goats, with the verse: “Sémma bíllani—berí kaní” (“This is
the whole of my town—cattle and goats;” or, in other words, “The
town and moat, two cows and a goat”). The poor stunted mimosas
had been cut down in many places, in order that the whole tract
being changed into a quagmire or swamp, it might be sown with the
peculiar kind of holcus called “másakwá” (Holcus cernuus); and then
these black, dismal-looking plains become one field of life and
wealth. This remarkable change in the aspect of the country, and
this second harvest, which takes place in the middle of the cold
season, and by which the fírki, or fírgi, becomes a fírgi mosogábe
(másakwábe), I shall have to describe in another place.
We then entered a well-cultivated and thickly inhabited district
called Yelé, where it was a novelty to be obliged to draw water from
the well or barrem Yelé; for since reaching Ujé on our journey out
we had constantly met waterpools or small rivulets, from which we
took our supply, and even the well at Maira was rendered quite
superfluous by a large tank close by. However, I have already had
occasion to observe that the water from these stagnant pools is
anything but wholesome, particularly after the rainy season, when
they receive no further supply; and I have no doubt that the drinking
of such water is the principal, if not the only cause of that dreadful
and widespread disease (the “fárantít” or “ʿarúg”—“ngíduwí” in
Kanúri—“the misery”) which disables the working man, and makes
him a poor wretched being—the guineaworm, which is sure to be
met with in at least one out of three persons who travel a great deal
through the whole of Central Africa. I never met with an instance of
this disease in a woman. It seemed to me, too, as if the pagans,
whose nakedness exposed all their limbs to view, suffered less from
it.
There seemed to be no superfluous supply of water in the district
through which our road then lay, which appeared as dry as I had left
it, only thinly scattered and lonely blades of grass shooting up here
and there; but yet there was a favoured spot where the road from
Márte to Alárge crossed our path, adorned with fine wide-spreading
tamarind-trees, and rain-clouds were approaching from the east to
fertilize the soil, and make it capable of production. We therefore
hurried on, and took shelter in the village Mʿallem-Shíshi, in order to
let the storm pass over; our hut, however, was so incapable of
resisting heavy rain, that as soon as the storm broke out we were
almost swamped. The carelessness with which the houses of the
natives are built in this region is an unmistakable evidence of the
difference of the climate; on the other side, we have seen the neat
huts of the people of Fúmbiná, and we shall see those of the
despised pagan natives of Músgu. The people assured me that this
was the first regular rain which they had had this year, the first
preparatory shower having fallen thirty days ago, and the second
two days ago.
The clouds having taken a southerly direction, we started forth in
the afternoon, after some hesitation, but had scarcely been an hour
on the march, and were just in the middle of a wide dismal-looking
ghadír or fírki, when the clouds, having gathered again over our
heads, poured down violent torrents of rain, so that in a few
moments the whole country looked like a lake, and our progress was
excessively difficult. At length, after an hour and a half, in the most
uncomfortable state we reached the village Kiryúmmuwa, where I
was quartered in a rather magnificent but as yet unfinished hut of
clay, and endeavoured to dry my wet clothes as well as I could.
We were now only one day’s march from Kúkawa; and we started
early the next morning, in order to reach home before night. The
neighbourhood of the capital had been sufficiently indicated already
during the last day’s march by the dúm-bushes, which, with the
melancholy Asclepias gigantea, might well decorate the scutcheon of
Kúkawa—with more justice, indeed, than the kúka, or monkey-
bread-tree, from which the name was taken, but of which but a few
poor stunted specimens are to be seen in the courtyard of the palace
in the eastern town.

We had scarcely gone a mile when we met the first body of

Shúwa, men and women, who were returning with their unloaded
pack-oxen from the great Monday market of the capital; and then
the string of market-people on their way to their respective homes
was almost uninterrupted. While our people followed the road,
Bíllama and I turned off a little to the left, in order to pay a visit to
the mayor of Múnghono and obtain a cool drink; for since I had had
the fever I suffered greatly from thirst, and the water from the wells
in general, as preserving a mean temperature of about eighty
degrees, was quite tepid. The place lies in an elevated position; and
on its south side there is a hollow, where wheat and onions are
cultivated after the rainy season, while another cavity surrounding it
on the north and east sides, and where at present only small
separate water-pools are collecting, forms, later in the season, one
continuous lake. There is a great deal of iron-stone, “kau súwa,”
hereabouts; and it is used by the native blacksmiths, though it
affords but an inferior sort of metal—far inferior to the excellent iron,
the “sú-búltu,” of Búbanjídda. While passing through the place, I
was greatly struck with the variety which the roofs of the huts
exhibited, and made a slight sketch of them (see previous page).
Múnghono, which is likewise the name of the whole district, has
been a place of importance from early times, and is often mentioned
in the history of the Bórnu kings. After the richness of natural forms
which I had beheld in Ádamáwa, the country seemed extremely
monotonous, there being nothing whatever to cheer the eye except
the blossom of the mimosas, which spread a sweet scent all around.
We encamped during the hot hours of the day near the well of
Káine, where we had great difficulty in supplying ourselves with
water from the well, while a little later in the season a large lake is
formed here: for Africa is the region of contrasts as well in nature as
in human life.
When we set out again from this place, people from the town,
who had been informed of our approach, came to meet us; and I
heard, to my great satisfaction, that the crafty Arab Mohammed el
Mughárbi, whom I had already met in Gúmmel, had at length arrived
with the merchandize confided to his care, the nominal value of
which was one hundred pounds sterling, so that there was at least
some hope of being able to carry on the mission on a small scale.
 But I could not but feel pleased with my reception on returning to
headquarters in this part of the world; for when we approached the
southern gate of the town, three horsemen, who were stationed
there, came galloping up to me, and having saluted me with their
spears raised, placed themselves in front, and in stately procession
led me through the town to my house, where I was soon regaled
with a plentiful supper sent by the vizier. I afterwards perceived that
he had expected me to pay him my respects the same evening; but,
as I felt very weak, I deferred the visit till the next morning, when,
on his return from an early visit to the sheikh, he gave me an
audience in the presence of all the people. Having expressed his
sorrow at my reduced state, and having inquired how I had been
received in Ádamáwa, he entered, with apparent delight, into a long
conversation with me respecting the form of the earth and the whole
system of the world. On being asked what I now intended to do, I
replied that it was my design, after having made the tour of the
lake, to try to penetrate into the regions south of Bagírmi. He
immediately expressed his doubts as to the possibility of going round
the lake as far as the Bahar el Ghazál, but promised to further my
plans as far as possible, although he thought that I had done
enough already, and should rather think of returning home safely
with the results of my labours; for seeing me so weak during the
first rainy season which I was spending in these regions, he was
afraid that something might happen to me.
Well satisfied with this audience, I returned to my quarters and
wrote a short report to H.M.’s Government, of the results of my
journey, informing them that my most deeply cherished hopes with
regard to that river in the south had been surpassed, and requesting
them to send an expedition in order to verify its identity with the so-
called Chadda. This report, which was sent off by a courier a day or
two before Mr. Overweg’s return from his navigation of the lake, and
which was overtaken by a messenger with a short account of his
survey, created general satisfaction in Europe, and procured for me
the confidence of H.M.’s Government. Meanwhile I endeavoured to
arrange the pecuniary affairs of the mission as well as I could.
 CHAPTER XXXVIII.
RAINY SEASON IN KÚKAWA.

I had left Kúkawa on my journey to Ádamáwa in the best state of

health, but had brought back from that excursion the germs of
disease; and residence in the town, at least at this period of the
year, was not likely to improve my condition. It would certainly have
been better for me had I been able to retire to some more healthy
spot; but trivial though urgent business obliged me to remain in
Kúkawa. It was necessary to sell the merchandize which had at
length arrived, in order to keep the mission in some way or other
afloat, by paying the most urgent debts and providing the necessary
means for further exploration. There was merchandize to the value
of one hundred pounds sterling; but, as I was obliged to sell the
things at a reduced rate for ready money, the loss was considerable;
for all business in these countries is transacted on two or three
months’ credit, and, after all, payment is made, not in ready money,
but chiefly in slaves. It is no doubt very necessary for a traveller to
be provided with those various articles which form the presents to
be made to the chiefs, and which are in many districts required for
bartering; but he ought not to depend upon their sale for the supply
of his wants. Altogether it is difficult to carry on trade in conjunction
with extensive geographical research, although a person settling
quietly down in a place, and entering into close relations with the
natives, might collect a great deal of interesting information, which
would probably escape the notice of the roving traveller, whose
purpose is rather to explore distant regions. Besides, I was obliged
to make numerous presents to my friends, in order to keep them in
good humour, and had very often not only to provide dresses for
themselves and their wives, but even for their domestic retainers; so
that, all things considered, the supply of one hundred pounds’ worth
of merchandize could not last very long.
I have remarked that, when I re-entered Kúkawa, the cultivation
of the ground had not yet begun; indeed, the whole country was so
parched, that it became even a matter of perplexity to find sufficient
fodder for the horses; for the whole stock of dry herbage was
consumed, and of young herbage none was to be had. It is stated in
my memoranda, that on the 5th of August I paid twelve rotl for a
“kéla kajímbe,” or large bundle of dry grass; an enormous price in
this country, and sufficient to maintain a whole family for several
days; but that was the most unfavourable moment, for in a few days
fresh herbage sprang up and made good all deficiencies. While
speaking on this subject, I may also mention, that the herbage of
Kúkawa, being full of “ngíbbi,” or Pennisetum distichum, horses
brought from other countries generally fare but badly on it, as they
are reluctant to fill their mouths with its small prickles.
Rain was very plentiful this year (1851), and I am sure would, if
measured, have far exceeded the quantity found by Mr. Vogel in
1854. Indeed, there were twelve very considerable falls of rain
during the month of August alone, which together probably
exceeded thirty inches. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that the
fall of rain in Kúkawa does not constitute the rule for the region, but
is quite exceptional, owing to the entire absence of trees and of
heights in the neighbourhood. Hence, the statement of Mr. Vogel in
one of his letters, that the line of tropical rains only begins south of
Kúkawa, must be understood with some reserve; for if he had
measured the rain in the woody country north of that capital,
between Dáwerghú and Kalíluwá, he would, in my opinion, have
obtained a very different result. It is evident that all depends upon
the meaning of the expression, tropical rain. If it imply a very
copious fall of rain, Kúkawa certainly does not lie within the limit of
tropical rain; but if we are to understand by it the regularly returning
annual fall of rain, produced by the ascending currents of heated air,
it certainly does. There was a very heavy fall of rain on the night of
the 3rd of August, which not only swamped our courtyard, but
changed my room, which lay half a foot lower, and was protected
only by a low threshold, into a little lake, aggravating my feverish
state very considerably, and spoiling most of my things.
On the 5th of August rain fell for the first time unaccompanied by
a storm, though the rainy season in general sets in with dreadful
tornadoes. The watery element disturbed the luxurious existence of
the “kanám galgálma,” the large termites, which had fed on our
sugar and other supplies, and on the 6th they all of a sudden
disappeared from the ground, and filled the air as short-lived winged
creatures, in which state they are called by the people “tsútsu,” or
“dsúdsu,” and, when fried, are used as food. Their tenure of life is so
precarious, and they seem to be so weak, that they become very
troublesome, as they fall in every direction upon man and his food.
Of each swarm of these insects only one couple seems destined to
survive; all the rest die a violent death.
The town now began to present quite a different appearance; but
while it was agreeable to see the dryness relieved, and succulent
grass and fresh crops springing up all around, and supplanting the
dull uniformity of the Asclepias gigantea, on the other hand, the
extensive waterpools formed everywhere in the concavities of the
ground, were by no means conducive to health, more especially as
those places were depositories of all sorts of offal, and of putrefying
carcasses of many kinds. The consequence was that my health,
instead of improving, became worse, although I struggled hard, and
as often as possible rode out on horseback. All the people were now
busy in the labours of the field, although cultivation in the
neighbourhood of the town is not of a uniform, but of a varied
character; and a large portion of the ground, consisting of “ánge”
and “fírki,” is reserved for the culture of the masákuwá (Holcus
cernuus), or winter-corn, with its variety the kérirám.
On the 8th of August the neighbourhood presented a very
animated spectacle, the crownlands in Gawánge being then
cultivated by a great number of people, working to the sound of a
drum. Their labours continued till the 15th; on which day Mr.
Overweg had the honour of presenting his Búdduma friends to the
sheikh of Bórnu. All nature was now cheerful; the trees were putting
forth fresh leaves, and the young birds began to fledge. I took great
delight in observing the little household of a family of the feathered
tribe; there were five young ones, the oldest and most daring of
which began to try his strength on the 12th of August, while the
other four set out together on the 14th.
Marriages are not frequent about this time, on account of the
dearness of corn; but matches are generally made after the harvest
has been got in, and while corn is cheap. I shall speak in another
place of the marriage ceremonies of this country.
On the 5th of September we obtained the first specimen of new
“argúm móro,” white Negro millet, which is very pleasant to the taste
when roasted on the fire; but this is regarded as a rarity, and new
corn is not brought into the market in any great quantities before
the end of November, or rather the beginning of December, when all
the corn, which has been for a long time lying in the fields in conical
heaps, called “búgga,” is threshed out.
My friend, the vizier, whose solicitude for my health I cannot
acknowledge too warmly, was very anxious that I should not stay in
the town during the rainy season; and knowing that one of our
principal objects was to investigate the eastern shore of lake Tsád,
sent me word, on the 11th of August, that I might now view the
Bahar el Ghazál, an undertaking which, as I have already mentioned,
he had at first represented as impossible. The news from Kánem,
however, was now favourable; but as I shall speak in another place
of the political state of this distracted country, and of the continual
struggle between Bórnu and Wadáÿ, I need only mention here that
the Welád Slimán, who had become a mercenary band attached to
the vizier, had been successful during their last expedition, and were
reported on the very day of my return from Ádamáwa to have made
a prize of one hundred and fifty horses and a great many camels,
which, however, was a great exaggeration.
 We were well acquainted with the character of these people, who
are certainly the most lawless robbers in the world; but as it was the
express wish of the British Government that we should endeavour to
explore the regions bordering on the lake, there was no course open
to us, but to unite our pursuits with theirs; besides, they were
prepared in some measure for such a union, for, while they inhabited
the grassy lands round the great Syrtis, they had come into frequent
contact with the English. We had no choice, for all the districts to the
north-east and east of the Tsád were at present in a certain degree
dependent on Wadáÿ, then at war with Bórnu, and we were told at
the commencement that we might go anywhere except to Wadáÿ.
Instead of fighting it out with his own people, which certainly would
have been the most honourable course, the vizier had ventured to
make use of the remnant of the warlike, and at present homeless,
tribe of the Welád Slimán, in the attempt to recover the eastern
districts of Kánem from his eastern rival; or at least to prevent the
latter from obtaining a sure footing in them; for this object he had
made a sort of treaty with these Arabs, undertaking to supply them
with horses, muskets, powder and shot. Thus, in order to visit those
inhospitable regions, which had attracted a great deal of attention in
Europe, we were obliged to embrace this opportunity. Under these
circumstances, on the 16th of August, I sent the vizier word that I
was ready to join the Welád Slimán in Búrgu; whereupon he
expressed a wish that Mr. Overweg might likewise accompany us;
the stay in Kúkawa during the rainy season being very unhealthy.
Mr. Overweg had returned on the 9th to Maduwári from his
interesting voyage on the Tsád, of which every one will deeply regret
that he himself was not able to give a full account. Traversing that
shallow basin in the English boat, which we had carried all the way
through the unbounded sandy wastes and the rocky wildernesses of
the desert, he had visited a great part of the islands, which are
dispersed over its surface, and which, sometimes reduced to narrow
sandy downs, at others expanding to wide grassy lowlands, sustain a
population in their peculiar national independence, the remnant of a
great nation which was exterminated by the Kanúri. It was a little
world of its own with which he had thus come into contact, and into
which we might hope to obtain by degrees a better insight. He
enjoyed excellent health, far better than when I saw him before, on
his first rejoining me in Kúkawa; and as he was well aware of the
strong reasons which our friend the vizier had for wishing us not to
stay in the swampy lowlands round the capital during the latter part
of the rainy season, he agreed to join me on this adventurous
expedition to the north-east.
Those regions had, from the very beginning of our setting out
from Múrzuk, attracted Mr. Overweg’s attention, and while as yet
unacquainted with the immense difficulties that attend travelling in
these inhospitable tracts, he had indulged in the hope of being able,
at some future time, to ramble about with our young Tébu lad,
Mohammed el Gatróni, among the fertile and picturesque valleys of
Búrgu and Wajánga. For this reason, as well as on account of my
debility, which left me, during the following expedition, the exercise
of only a small degree of my natural energy, it is greatly to be
regretted that my unfortunate companion, who seemed never fully
aware that his life was at stake, did not take into consideration the
circumstance that he himself might not be destined to return home,
in order to elaborate his researches. If all the information which he
occasionally collected were joined to mine, those countries would be
far better known than they now are; but instead of employing his
leisure hours in transcribing his memoranda in a form intelligible to
others, he left them all on small scraps of paper, negligently written
with lead pencil, which, after the lapse of some time, would become
unintelligible even to himself. It is a pity that so much talent as my
companion possessed was not allied with practical habits, and
concentrated upon those subjects which he professed to study.
The political horizon of Negroland during this time was filled with
memorable events, partly of real, partly of fictitious importance.
Whatever advantages Bórnu may derive from its central position, it
owes to it also the risk of being involved in perpetual struggles with
one or other of the surrounding countries. And hence it is that,
under a weak government, this empire cannot stand for any length
of time; it must go on conquering and extending its dominion over
adjacent territories, or it will soon be overpowered. Towards the
north is the empire of the Turks, weak and crumbling in its centre,
but always grasping with its outlying members, and threatening to
lay hold of what is around; towards the north-west, the Tuarek, not
forming a very formidable united power, but always ready to pounce
upon their prey whenever opportunity offers; towards the west, the
empire of Sókoto, great in extent, but weak beyond description in
the unsettled state of its loosely connected provinces, and from the
unenergetic government of a peacefully disposed prince; for while
one provincial governor was just then spreading around him the
flames of sedition and revolt, towards the south another vassal of
this same empire was disputing the possession of those regions
whence the supply of slaves is annually obtained; and towards the
east, there is an empire strong in its barbarism, and containing the
germs of power, should it succeed in perfectly uniting those
heterogeneous elements of which it is composed—I mean Wadáÿ.
With regard to the Turks, the state of affairs at this time was
peculiar. Bórnu, as we have seen in the historical account of that
empire, once embraced the whole region as far as Fezzán,—nay,
even the southern portion of Fezzán itself, and even Wadán; but
since the decline of the empire in the latter half of the last century
these limits had been abandoned, and the communication with the
north had, in general, become extremely unsafe. This state of things
is necessarily disadvantageous to a country which depends for many
things on the supplies conveyed from the north; and the authorities
naturally wish that, since they themselves, in their present condition,
are unable to afford security to this important communication,
somebody else may do it. Hence it was that, after my arrival in April,
when the vizier was conversing with me about the prospects of a
regular commercial intercourse with the English, he declared that he
should be much pleased if the Turks would occupy Kawár, and more
particularly Bilma; and by building a fort and keeping a garrison near
the salt-mines of that place, exercise some control over the Tuarek
of Aír, and make them responsible for robberies committed on the
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