Learning to Draw at Age 54 - Update 3 - Right Brain Exercises

One of Betty Edwards techniques in Drawing On The Right Side of The Brain approach is force the left brain to shut down by giving it a task that it can’t do easily. the first of these is to copy a famous drawing by looking at it upside down. In addition you tell your left brain to be patient and just let this go and then you don’t allow throughts about body parts to enter your mind. For example, when you are drawing a hand upside down you try not to think about the word “Hand“. Turns out this was a really easy exercise. Here are two examples of my upside down copies.

R-Mode Exercise done on September 7th, 2008

R-Mode exercise done on September 28th, 2008

Another technique that helps improve Right Brain focus (she calls it R-Mode) just before drawing is called Contour drawing. The basic principle is to take an object with lots of variety in its edges, such as crumpled up paper, and to draw the edges. The trick of contour drawing however, is to not look at the drawing but instead focus on seeing the edges on the object you are drawing. If you do this before the real drawing begins, you will be able to go into R-Mode much faster and easier and be more focused. It also helps in visual acuity. When practicing the contour drawing technique and many of the other actual drawing exercises we close one eye to avoid problems with stereo images.

Many of my contour drawing don’t look anything like the paper I’m drawing. This one is a good example. However, one time my contour drawing looked very much like the paper. I knew then that my actual drawing exercise would be better (i.e., the chair drawing which is not yet scanned and posted here)