Until the last two decades, indications that blind people would understand and create pictures were sparse. EW, a totally blind adult, who began making raised-line drawings in her thirties, created a portfolio of several hundred sketches in nine years. She selects her own topics and invents her treatments of the subjects. What is of special interest here is that two of her drawings, shown in the present paper, depict places but also use devices to indicate one is a sanctuary and the other concerns a tragic era, using metaphor. Lightness of line in a forest drawing indicates it is out of reality, enchanted, and a sanctuary. A tilted grid in a drawing of a Holocaust memorial shows the events at issue were twisted and crooked. The devices are metaphoric and novel. The drawings deal with an ontological category—values—for which metaphorical devices in raised-line depictions have not previously been considered.
BredekampH, 2012“Horizons of picture act and embodiment”, in Bodies in Action and Symbolic Forms Eds BredekampHLauschkeMArteagaA (Berlin: Akademie Verlag) pp IX–XXII
3.
CabeP A, 2011“Haptic distal spatial perception mediated by strings”Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance371492–1511
4.
ChaoH-YKennedyJ MWnuczkoM, in press “Elevation easier than plan for sighted and early-blind adults in a perspective-taking task”Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
5.
EardleyA FVan VelzenJ, 2011“Event-related potential evidence for the use of external coordinates in the preparation of tactile attention by the early-blind”European Journal of Neuroscience331897–1907
ErikssonY, 1998Tactile Pictures: Pictorial Representations for the Blind 1784–1940 (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University Press)
8.
GibsonJ J, 1962“Observations on active touch”Psychological Review67477–491
9.
GolombC, 2003The Child's Creation of a Pictorial World2nd edition (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)
10.
GombrichE H, 1960Art and Illusion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)
11.
HellerM A, 2002“Tactile picture perception in sighted and blind people”Behavioral Brain Research13565–68
12.
HellerM ABallesterosS, 2006“Introduction: Approaches to touch and blindness”, in Touch and Blindness: Psychology and Neuroscience Eds HellerM ABallesterosS (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) pp 1–24
13.
KennedyJ M, 1982“Metaphor in pictures”Perception11589–605
14.
KennedyJ M, 1993Drawing and the Blind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press)
15.
KennedyJ M, 2008“Metaphoric drawings devised by an early-blind adult on her own initiative”Perception371720–1728
16.
KennedyJ M, 2009“Outline, mental states and drawings by a blind woman”Perception381481–1496
17.
KennedyJ M, 2012“What is an outline drawing in vision and touch? Blind and palaeolithic artists”, in Bodies in Action and Symbolic Forms Eds BredekampHLauschkeMArteagaA (Berlin: Akademie Verlag) pp 239–252
18.
KennedyJ MGabiasP, 1986“Metaphoric devices in drawings of motion mean the same to the blind and the sighted”Perception15189–195
19.
KennedyJ MHammadS, 2012“Cognition and representation: Picture perception”, in Verkörperungen [Embodiment], Eds BlumA LKroisJ MRheinbergerH-J (Berlin: Akademie Verlag) pp 71–83
20.
KennedyJ MMerkasC, 2000“Depictions of motion devised by a blind person”Psychonomic Bulletin & Review7700–706
21.
KennedyJ MJuricevicI, 2006“Blind man draws using diminution in three dimensions”Psychonomic Bulletin & Review13506–509
22.
LaursenB, 1990Blyertsteckning. En introduction I kreativt bildarbete [Pencil drawing. An introduction to creative picture making] (Stockholm: Bonnier)
23.
LedermanS JKlatzkyR LChatawayCSummersC, 1990“Visual mediation and the haptic recognition of two-dimensional pictures of common objects”Perception & Psychophysics4754–64
24.
LoomisJ MPhilbeckJ W, 2008“Measuring perception with spatial updating and action”, in Embodiment, Ego-space and Action Eds KlatzkyR LBehrmannMMacWhinneyB (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) pp 1–43
25.
MillarS, 1994Understanding and Representing Space: Theory and Evidence from Studies with Early- blind and Sighted Children (Oxford: Clarendon Press)
26.
PicardDLebazS, 2012“Identifying raised-line drawings by touch: A hard but not impossible task”Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness106427–431
27.
RitchieL D, 2013Metaphor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
28.
TintiCAdenzatoMTamiettoMCornoldiC, 2006“Visual experience is not necessary for efficient survey spatial cognition: Evidence from early-blindness”The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology591306–1328
29.
VicariP, 1993“Renaissance emblematica”Metaphor and Symbolic Activity8153–168
30.
WillatsJ, 2005Making Sense of Children 's Drawings (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)
31.
ZollitschE, 2003I Know Where I Am (Waldkirchen: SüdOst-Verlag)
