I love to draw and believe that anyone can learn how to do it. In Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards posits that drawing is really a matter of seeing.
"A METHOD OF TEACHING BASIC DRAWING SKILLS
When Betty Edwards’s book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, was first published in 1979, it received an immediate positive response and, to everyone’s surprise, remained on the New York Times’s Best Sellers List for nearly a year. Over the years since then, Dr. Edwards has revised the book three times to include advances and clarifications in the teaching techniques and the underlying theory. The book is now widely accepted by artists, teachers, and others around the world.
The teaching methods Dr. Edwards presents in the book are largely based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of Dr. Roger W. Sperry, (1913-1994), the eminent neuropsychologist and neurobiologist at CalTech (the California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena. His work focused on the lateralization of verbal, analytic, sequential functions, which, for most individuals, are mainly located in the left hemisphere; and the visual, spatial, perceptual functions, mainly located in most individuals’ right hemispheres. In Sperry’s words, each hemisphere is
“. . . indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.” Roger W. Sperry, 1974
Most activities require both modes (which Dr. Edwards fortuitously termed in the 1979 book “L-mode” and “R-mode,” no matter where located in the individual brain). Each mode contributes its special functions to most tasks (this is the brain “working as a whole”), but a few activities require mainly one mode, without significant interference from the other. Drawing is one of these activities. Other examples from ordinary life requiring largely separate systems are:
For L-mode, the left hemisphere verbal, analytic, sequential system: Balancing your checkbook. We do not want creative, intuitive checkbook balancing. We want step-by-step verbal, numerical, sequential analysis.
For R-mode, the right hemisphere visual, spatial, perceptual system: Facial recognition. We do not analyze a face, naming each feature in sequence, in order to recognize the face of a friend. Recognition is instant, visual, and global (all-at-once)."
In short, when we're young, we draw symbols of a thing rather than the thing itself. We say "this is a car, this is a face, this is a table" and we replicate what our mind's eye has imperfectly memorized. When one trains oneself to see what we draw and draw what we see, the results are astonishing. Drawing and sketching become pleasurable, and indeed the art of seeing small details helps all creative endeavors.
What an interesting piece of writing..and story telling! I have always wanted to draw, but never even made an attempt—maybe now I will. Also enjoyed your book reviews. I believe I saw the one about St. Louis in the Times Book Review
I too have taken up sketching, since I bought an Ipad and apple pencil, it's something I've picked up and dropped over the years but I've kept it up for some time now. I use reference photo's or watch tutorials and it is addictive. I send a monthly postcard to my teenage granddaughter in the UK with one of my sketches and I've started to sketch and draw images to go along with my series which is a little scary but I love producing them.
I love to draw and believe that anyone can learn how to do it. In Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards posits that drawing is really a matter of seeing.
"A METHOD OF TEACHING BASIC DRAWING SKILLS
When Betty Edwards’s book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, was first published in 1979, it received an immediate positive response and, to everyone’s surprise, remained on the New York Times’s Best Sellers List for nearly a year. Over the years since then, Dr. Edwards has revised the book three times to include advances and clarifications in the teaching techniques and the underlying theory. The book is now widely accepted by artists, teachers, and others around the world.
The teaching methods Dr. Edwards presents in the book are largely based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of Dr. Roger W. Sperry, (1913-1994), the eminent neuropsychologist and neurobiologist at CalTech (the California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena. His work focused on the lateralization of verbal, analytic, sequential functions, which, for most individuals, are mainly located in the left hemisphere; and the visual, spatial, perceptual functions, mainly located in most individuals’ right hemispheres. In Sperry’s words, each hemisphere is
“. . . indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.” Roger W. Sperry, 1974
Most activities require both modes (which Dr. Edwards fortuitously termed in the 1979 book “L-mode” and “R-mode,” no matter where located in the individual brain). Each mode contributes its special functions to most tasks (this is the brain “working as a whole”), but a few activities require mainly one mode, without significant interference from the other. Drawing is one of these activities. Other examples from ordinary life requiring largely separate systems are:
For L-mode, the left hemisphere verbal, analytic, sequential system: Balancing your checkbook. We do not want creative, intuitive checkbook balancing. We want step-by-step verbal, numerical, sequential analysis.
For R-mode, the right hemisphere visual, spatial, perceptual system: Facial recognition. We do not analyze a face, naming each feature in sequence, in order to recognize the face of a friend. Recognition is instant, visual, and global (all-at-once)."
In short, when we're young, we draw symbols of a thing rather than the thing itself. We say "this is a car, this is a face, this is a table" and we replicate what our mind's eye has imperfectly memorized. When one trains oneself to see what we draw and draw what we see, the results are astonishing. Drawing and sketching become pleasurable, and indeed the art of seeing small details helps all creative endeavors.
https://www.drawright.com/theory has much more information. It takes a few weeks, but it's so worth it.
What an interesting piece of writing..and story telling! I have always wanted to draw, but never even made an attempt—maybe now I will. Also enjoyed your book reviews. I believe I saw the one about St. Louis in the Times Book Review
It's always good to have pencil skills in your storytelling toolkit. Nicely done!
I absolutely love this! And how this Substack community builds each other--with Nishant's SneakyArt, too. So good! So many treasures in this place!
I too have taken up sketching, since I bought an Ipad and apple pencil, it's something I've picked up and dropped over the years but I've kept it up for some time now. I use reference photo's or watch tutorials and it is addictive. I send a monthly postcard to my teenage granddaughter in the UK with one of my sketches and I've started to sketch and draw images to go along with my series which is a little scary but I love producing them.