PUTTING THE MAP IN PERSPECTIVE:
DRAWING TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE
IN GEOGRAPHY
Vasco Cardoso1, Luís Espinheira2, David Lopes3
1 Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto; Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
2 Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto; Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
3 Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto; Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
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Text currently in press, to be published soon in an edited volume on workshops in other fields of knowledge, as part of the FCT-funded research project DRAWinU (https://doi.org/10.54499/PTDC/ART-OUT/3560/2021).
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ABSTRACT
The workshop was designed for the Master in Teaching Geography in the 3rd Cycle of Basic Education and Secondary Education students at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto and aimed at future geography teachers. The objective was to create a context-specific geographic knowledge of the landscape through drawing.
The proposed problem was: How can we think about the landscape vertically by observing it in situ and with a map in hand to annotate its distinctive features and outline its structuring forms?
The strategy involved drawing the principal overlapping visual planes of the landscape, using techniques and knowledge associated with map-making.
The body was engaged in on-site drawing, emphasising the haptic dimension.
The field of view, the distance to the picture plane, the framing, and the observed silhouettes abstracted from the landscape support and circumscribe it and highlight the observer's position.
Some cartography drawing methods formed the core resources provided in the workshop: triangulation, measurement, scale, notation, legend, outline and inner contours, and transparency. Additionally, three mediating devices were introduced: two optical – a "Velo" and an analogue camera lucida – and one digital – a mobile phone photography application.
The ambitious objective was to empower future teachers with drawing as a cognitive tool, enabling them to replicate this activity in their future classrooms' teaching context.
TASK
To draw cityscapes from an elevated vantage point, using the city plan as a reference, analysing the field of view and employing measurements and optical mediating devices, such as drawing machines - simple mechanical or optical aids, and digital devices.
AIMS
- To explore the drawing of city views based on some fundamental cartographic knowledge and techniques.
- To consolidate the understanding of the observer's spatial position, their field of view, and the visual planes of the landscape to be outlined, both on the city map and on the vertical picture plane, where each student will draw the landscape.
- To enhance the learning outcomes by incorporating optical and digital mediator devices to support cognitive observational drawing.
- To assert Drawing as an epistemic tool — a visual and cognitive medium boosting spatial thinking and knowledge.
- To investigate the relevance and applicability of teaching/learning/assessment methods within the educational field of future Geography teachers.
TIME FRAME
180 minutes.
MATERIALS AND PREPARATIONS
- Acrylic sheets (3mm thickness) featuring the visual field, main visual vertical line, and observer's horizon line (marked in advance on the back of the sheet, opposite the drawing surface, to avoid being erased).
- Tripods to stabilise and position the acrylic sheets.
- Camera lucida devices.
- Mobile phone applications to support observational drawing.
- Drawing paper of varying types and qualities.
- Acetate pens and other drawing materials.
- Drawing boards.
- Binder clips to secure paper to the drawing boards.
- Alcohol at 96o to clean the acrylic sheets.
INSTRUCTIONS
- General Guidelines:
Participants will work individually or in pairs, actively encouraging peer discussion.
Three observation points must be set up in advance, each equipped with a distinct optical device:
1) acrylic sheets supported or mounted on tripods
2) camera lucida devices attached to drawing boards supported by tripods
3) mobile phone drawing support applications
Each student should be provided with a map of the location, indicating the visible area of the territory that they can draw from their position.
Before beginning the activity, students should learn a brief but focused introduction explaining the objectives, tasks, and working methods.
- Specific Guidelines:
Considering the relationship between the map and the landscape, students must be aware of the importance of the observer's positioning, point of focus, field of view, main visual vertical plane, observer's horizon plane, and the impact of framing on the drawing.
On the map, the observation place and field of vision will be identified and registered, as well as the significant points of the landscape and the frontal foreground planes that allow for its subdivision.
Upon arriving at the observation positions, students will receive instructions on using each device and have some time to familiarise themselves with the equipment.
The participants will produce observational drawings from three designated points on site, mediated by optical devices, and apply the abovementioned strategies.
Throughout the drawing process, ongoing discussion will be encouraged between what is represented on the map and what is drawn in perspective.
TIPS AND THINGS TO CONSIDER:
To execute a landscape drawing from any of the three selected observation points on site, one must follow the steps:
- To use only one eye – the observing eye.
- To understand that the field of view is an abstraction of the surface of a cone of revolution, with its vertex at the observing eye, the principal line of sight as its axis, and a maximum angle of 60° between any two generatrixes.
-To understand that the distance between the observer and the drawing plane will determine the size of the circumference – the field of view limit on the drawing sheet.
- To maintain fixed consistency throughout the process, the drawing device and the distance between the observing eye and the drawing surface.
- To ensure that the observer's horizon line is levelled.
- Always look towards the same fixed point, selected as the target of the main line of sight; also, ensure two further fixed points along the observer's horizon line – one positioned at the far left and the other at the far right.
- To understand landscape drawing as delineating the outlines and inner contours of the foreground and overlapping visual planes, allowing the visual reading of the forms within the landscape.
- To be aware that mobile phone drawing support applications produce a fixed, non-optical, and transparent image. When this image on the device is aligned parallel to the drawing surface and positioned between the observing eye and the drawing hand, it can effectively guide the drawing process.
- To understand that the camera lucida optical device offers a fragmented visual perception of reality, demanding heightened attention when drawing the image onto paper.
REVIEW
Understanding a territory—its description, the recognition of its boundaries, and the comprehension of the phenomena, dynamics, and relationships observable within it—and the positioning of the human body in space are long-standing areas of exploration within Geography. Drawing, through epistemological proximity, soon became allied to these practices, clarifying and recording knowledge through cartographic representation. Maps emerged as one of the most effective graphic productions for synthesising spatial organisation.
However, further practices have been shared across these two fields. Among them are field visits and walking performances, often formalised in field notebooks. These notebooks offer both speed and selectivity, enabling the registration of essential data. Jorge Gaspar (2021, p. 52) acknowledged the value of drawings as models and the act of drawing as a method for modelling emphatic syntheses of observed phenomena. The remarkable field notebooks of Portuguese geographer Orlando Ribeiro are exemplary cases. For Ribeiro, fieldwork and direct observation formed the foundation of geographic research. His notebooks combined map and landscape drawings, complemented by notations, annotations, and analytical tools such as cross-sections, transparencies, and overlays. These methods enabled him to construct provisional syntheses that bridged realistic representation and theoretical schemata. In his advocacy for learning through drawing, Ribeiro emphasised the heuristic value of drawing, unconcerned with aesthetic or mimetic dimensions (1941,1943).
This workshop builds conceptually on that historic partnership, seeking new insights to help answer one of the research questions of the DRAWinU (https://drawinu.fba.up.pt/project/), a funded project: What learning processes can be stimulated through drawing activities to enhance understanding of visual, spatial, and temporal content in STEM areas?
Therefore, the workshop was designed for students enrolled in the Master in Teaching Geography in the 3rd Cycle of Basic Education and Secondary Education—at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto.
Its general aim was to test practices of drawing-based map construction to develop geographical knowledge of the landscape. Moreover, given the participants' prospective roles as teachers, the activity was also intended to showcase its pedagogical relevance. It aimed to demonstrate how drawing-based activities in STEM subjects can significantly enhance Geography's teaching, learning, and assessment processes.
A few key considerations informed the adopted method. Specifically, it drew a parallel between the critical role of maps in understanding territorial organisation and the views on haptically comprehending landscapes. If the cartographer gazes at the overall of a territory, the perspectivist drawer observes the partial. In cartography, the observer's position is rational and abstract, or detached. In contrast, in perspective drawing, the embodied presence of the observer determines the visual field, which is perceptive and framed. Accordingly, considering gravity's influence, the horizontal arrangement of phenomena and dynamics tends to preclude overlaps and inner contours in cartographic representations. Conversely, outlines and overlaps are abundant in landscape depictions, viewed from eye level and drawn on a vertical plane. Therefore, it suggests sequential frontal planes that can be analytical subdivisions of landscape components.
The operational aim of the workshop was to question the capacity and suitability of cartographic products such as Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) Maps to capture the complexity of territorial experience. With that purpose, the method emphasised the haptic dimension of drawing and its role in understanding the landscape. Aligned with Geography's strong tradition of active observation, the workshop underscored the integration of cartographic representation and field notebooks. The method pursued the goal of guiding the geographer's eye toward the landscape without losing sight of the map.
The workshop offers three drawing exercises differentiated by the mediating drawing device used.
The first drawing exercise employed a transparent acrylic sheet, interpreting the conceptual Alberti's "veil" (1435). Participants drew the main contours of the landscape directly onto the acrylic. It was unnecessary to think of drawing instruments with the precision of Dürer or closed-grid systems described by Alberti as a thin veil. The essential idea was to show that a geometric system underlies vision.
Participants began by locating their position on the city's tourist map and within the selected space. From there, as in cartography—albeit for different reasons—a set of parameters necessary for the observational drawing was taught. These are derived from linear perspective and are present in today's image-making tools, such as cameras and digital apps, which form the basis of the two subsequent exercises. Thus, the drawing process was understood not as a faithful reproduction of reality but as a simulation and selection captured during a specific observation in a single moment. In this sense, drawing became a process of learning about the landscape.
Starting the exercise, participants established a fixed, horizontal line of sight towards a prominent point in the landscape—the primary target. Students carried out this task both on the map and in the drawing. It would correspond to the centre of the camera's viewfinder in photographic terms. After that, the concept of a visual field—a compromise between what a stationary eye sees and what it can depict—was introduced. Human binocular vision spans approximately 120° horizontally and 130° vertically. To support this understanding, we used the abstract idea of a conical visual field, described as the surface of a cone with its vertex at the observer's eye, aligned with the main line of sight, and having a 30° angle between the axis and generatrix. Its orthogonal projection onto the map and its simulation through outstretched, level arms defined the framing circle, formed by the intersection of the cone surface and the acrylic sheet.
The observer's distance to the acrylic was marked on the map, ensuring the largest possible framing circle within the reach of the drawing hand. The visual cone surface abstraction also involved two perpendicular planes along the main line of sight – one of which was the observer's horizon plane. The intersection of these planes with the acrylic, along with the framing circle, created a viewfinder and established the actual spatial position of the observer to the subject of the drawing. In cartographic drawing, the observer's position—here, an abstract figure located at infinity—is also fundamental to define a primary attribute of cartographic products: scale and measurement. Under these conditions, participants could focus on identifying and representing the main formal structures of the landscape through triangulation, outlining, and annotation. The new drawers used a triangulation strategy to mark key points on the outer and inner contours of the principal foreground planes, subdividing the landscape. These planes were imagined on the map, while their outlines were depicted in the drawing.
Both the viewfinder and map allowed participants to return to their drawing at any time by re-aligning the key point of the landscape with the centre of the viewfinder and matching the two reference points previously taken from the landscape with the left and right intersections of the observer's horizon line with the framing circumference.
The second exercise employed drawing support software on mobile devices, exploring the convergences between drawn and photographic representations.
The first exercise's parameters, conditions, and precautions were the same. A focal length of 50mm is a reasonable approximation in photography to the human eye's vision, balancing visual amplitude and optical distortion (Bartrina, 2001). However, unlike human physiology, cameras allow variation in this amplitude depending on lens focal length and sensor size. The primary difference between camera lenses and the human visual system lies not in the angle of vision but in the focal area—formed on a flat surface (sensor or paper), unlike the curved retina.
Functional similarities between the acrylic viewfinder and the cameras allowed the learning from the first exercise to be applied here.
The view was captured using a smartphone camera and displayed as a transparent overlay on the screen. Positioned horizontally and parallel to the drawing sheet, the phone enabled the participant to trace the landscape's outer and inner contours, guided by the semi-transparent image. Maintaining visual stability, a steady device, and fine motor control required adherence to the highlighted precautions. Participants came to understand that this was not drawing from direct observation.
The third drawing exercise involved the use of a camera lucida. It maintained the parameters, strategies, and precautions from the earlier exercises. As with the mobile software, the screen's dimensions dictated the visual field and viewfinder dimensions. With the camera lucida, the small optical prism necessitates the observer's eye to be in very close proximity, thereby determining the size of the drawing (Stanley, 1868, pp. 115-117). However, the key difference between this device and photographic software lies in the image's origin: digital images are processed electronically, while those produced by the camera lucida result from physical optical operation. Unlike the fixed images of free mobile apps, the camera lucida offers a real-time experience. These limiting and stimulating constraints raised participants' awareness of their drawing experience as unfolding in time. The camera lucida stressed the importance of drawing as a conductor of an experience in time, and not only as a tool to obtain a visual result.
Despite the visual similarities among the resulting drawings of the three exercises, the images produced through seeing, photographing, and drawing are fundamentally different. The mediating devices engaged questions of human physiology, perception, optics, and the nature of the tools. Therefore, they helped participants better understand and control the drawing of the city's views, depicting them more legibly.
Thinking about the landscape as projected onto a vertical plane can pose a challenge for educational contexts of Geography. However, mastering this conceptualisation can contribute to a deeper geographical understanding of landscape.
The workshop centred on an observational drawing-based activity, proposing a methodology for outlining landscape features using key cartographic drawing techniques, mediated by optical devices. This technical appropriation enabled a bridge to be established between cartographic and landscape drawing. It also highlighted Drawing’s haptic qualities: the observer’s spatial immersion reinforced awareness of the landscape’s potential for multiple, complementary interpretations. Simultaneous readings of territory and landscape were presented to be beneficial. Despite conceptual differences, the transferability of methods between cartographic and landscape drawing became evident. The workshop emphasised the role of active observation as fundamental to both Geography and Drawing.
An anonymous survey at the end revealed a high level of satisfaction, with participants recognising Drawing as a valuable tool in knowledge construction and its relevance in educational contexts of Geography.
REFERENCES
“Cadernos de Campo” [URL: https://orlandoribeiro.igot.ulisboa.pt/cadernos/index.htm]. In the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Lisbon, Portugal, website “Orlando Ribeiro” [URL: https://orlandoribeiro.igot.ulisboa.pt/].
Alberti, L.B. (2011). On Painting: A New Translation and Critical (1st Ed. 1435). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN: 978-1107000629.
Bartrina, L. V. (2001). Perspectiva Lineal. Su Construcción y su relación con la fotografia. Barcelona: Edicions Upc. ISBN: 978-8483015018.
Dürer, A. (2018). Underweysung der Messung: Mit dem Zirkel Uñ Richt Schent, in Linien Ebnen Unnd Gantzen Corporen (Classic Reprint, 1525). London: Forgotten Books. ISBN: 978-0332507057.
Gaspar, J. (2021). “Desenhar com o Território”. In Cardoso, V., Fernandes, M. G. e Rodrigues, C. (Eds.) Representações, Desenhos e Imagens do Território. Porto: i2ADS, CEGOT e CITTA. p.52. ISBN: 978-989-9049-19-2.
Ribeiro, O. (1st Ed. 1941-1943). “Orientações modernas da Geografia - Excurso 1.º - O desenho e a geografia”. In Ribeiro, O. (2011) O Ensino da Geografia. Porto: Porto Editora. pp. 108-109. ISBN: 978-972-0-32011-7.
Stanley, W. F. (3rd Ed., 1868). A Descriptive Treatise on Mathematical Drawing Instruments. Their Construction, Uses, Qualities, Selection, Preservation, and Suggestions for Improvements, with Hints Upon Drawing and Colouring. Published by the Author, at: 5, Great Turnstile, Holborn, London, W.C.
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