This is a continuation of a series of posts. The last two posts were about Shadows and Highlights and Drawing Negative Space.

In the previous two classes we worked on our self-portrait. Last night we had a little celebration and got the chance to spend a little about two hours on something we wanted to draw.  I spend 30 minutes putting some final touches on my self-portrait and then began drawing my youngest daughter’s portrait as a draft image. I wanted to experiment a little drawing her portrait before I jump in with better paper and maybe a change in tactics.  First about the self-portrait:

I’ll let you be the judge of the quality of my portrait. I did learn several important things to take care of in drawing this portrait.

I need to lighten the highlights a lot and darken the shadows. Basically add dynamic range.

I need to put an early image taped to the wall and step back to get perspective.  For example my beard is just not that full. Used to be when I was younger but I keep it short now.

Must keep my hands clean. I would erase an area to give it highlights, only to gray it up again as I moved my hands across the image.

Now for the draft portrait of my daughter. You notice cross hair erasure marks. This was intentional. I wanted to get this one very accurate in terms of proportion and perspective. But being a draft I’m not going to do any more with this image.

I’m going to draw this again 4 times at least.

1) With the typical prepared ground (dark) background like this one but on better and whitter paper.

2) Without any grounding. I will add the shadows and background effect after I get the general features placed on the page.

3 and 4) Using painter X on a Mac laptop with a grounded background and starting plain as well.

I’ll post them on this blog when done.

Summary

This class has been one of the best experiences I have had in exploring my own creative abilities. My drawings before this class were typical stick figured and embarrassing. As I stated in an earlier post, I had always felt that I had artist within me and yet, was yearning to express himself.  I’ve been able to create many things in my life like profitable companies, web sites, high performing teams and and more. But none of these activities felt artistic to me. Now I both know a little about the artist within, I also have a greater appreciation for my other talents that I have been able to exercise through the years.

I will be continuing to practice drawing and may, someday, move to paiting with color or at least electronic painting with Corel Painter and more.

Thanks for all the kind comments (mostly provided privately) that have offered words of encourangment and hope as I made my way through this fantastic journey.  Over the holiday break, I will probably add an epilogue post to this series with final throught. But for now a big thanks to Betty Edwards for her great book - Drwaing on the Right Side of the Brain, and to Nancy our wonderful instructor.

This post is an update to a series of articles on using Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain techniques (search for the Book with the same name in Amazon). The previous article was update 10.

Back in October we learned to see the negative space (the space that surrounds an object) as a way to use the right brain.  During those exercises we drew a hard plastic and metal chair over two classes.  My drawing is below. As this one developed I began to see my style and how different my style is from the other class members. I have an engineering background so I wanted to capture the hard lines. One of the class drawings had this chair become much softer. The great part was, all of the negative space chairs turned out wonderful in their own way.

This is when we all knew that we were learning these techniques and had some inherent talent hidden in us for all these years.

Next week I’ll post my self portrait, the final image from the class. Still needs a little work and I’m half pleased with it. My classmates think it is wonderful. I have my doubts. But maybe with a little more work on it I’ll learn to love it.

Update 12 shows my final Self-Portrait and a draft drawing of one of my daughters.

This is a continuation of an article that can be found here. You should read that article first to get the most value out of this post.  Enjoy!

Ken Ritchie

Intuitively, I’ve grown up rather “creatively” so I don’t tend to reach intentionally for L or R, but rather interplay and balance.

R-Mode Accessing Techniques:

• - draw, sketch, doodle, diagram, flowcharts
• - listen to music
• - I drive and carry a voice recorder to capture the words (but it doesn’t capture the visualizations)
• - I walk around (bodily-kinesthetic or haptic but spatial none the less)
• - Analogies come easily, and I look for parallels and similes
• - I seem to favor the visual-structural modeling and sketching as my break- from-L-mode tactic

Comment: I met Ken many years ago and find him to be very right brain or at least able to go to extreme right brain when needed. Its nice that he still has lots of R-Mode shifting exercises he uses.  Ken tells me that he is very visual but others have assessed him as being very even L-Mode / R-Mode.

Robert Poulk

Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.) by Robert Pursig. It’s not a  self-help book by any stretch of the  imagination, but his writings on the two ways to sense the world around us are foundational to this discussion.  It is one  of the 3 books that are required reading  for all analysts/troubleshooters. There are 2 ways to assimilate the world around us, the way engineers do and the way the other 99.99% of the population does. This is about learning to grok your customer’s context so you can solve the problem rather than just fix the symptom.

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection (Sherlock Holmes) — we spend 75% of our time troubleshooting our own assumptions. These stories are all about not doing that. \

The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions (1st book) — Technologists and troubleshooters especially are not always so smart about the world of people. This book contains everything you need to know to survive the world in which we practice our craft.

The trick is in seeing that every problem  can be solved with linear methods only at the micro level, and then only if you  understand the macro context that  surrounds the symptoms. Performing  tests to refine the symptoms is actually a  way to generate points that  help define  the context.

Michael Spayd

I like Hermann’s http://www.hbdi.com/home/ work on brain stuff (wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrmann_Brain_Dominance_Instrument.

I don’t think per se about going right brain, but I do think a lot about getting myself and others into their body, which I think has fundamentally the same effect.

I use  these practices:
- meditation
- shamanic journeying
- simple body-based exercises
- systemic constellations
- drumming - chanting
- dancing, acting/theatre exercises (e.g., Lee Devin who wrote Artful Making and teaches theatre),
- playback theatre (a form of improv)
- and in general just create my own rituals.

Martin van Laerhoven

The best way to enhance and improve both sides is by meditation. Not only will meditation help you synchronize and improve the use of both hemispheres, search for whole brain function or see example link

Meditation will also help you to use the brain over a wider range. Where mostly we are in the awakened state in Beta, with meditation you become capable to also utilize Alpha, Theta and Delta while in an awakened state.

I have used Holosync Meditation for more then 6 years and I can tell you it has helped me tremendous. See last link, here also more on the previous issues:

Links:
http://www.guide-to-self-help-techniques.com/brainwave-synchronization.html
http://web-us.com/brainwavesfunction.htm
http://www.centerpointe.com/

Comment: I meditate and it helps me more than I  can attest here, so I know thew value of meditation. Two of the three links above refer to products for sale. I have not used these and cannot attest to their value. So buyer beware. However, if you try them, please let me know what your opinions are about the products.  I do use some guided visualization audio CDs for helping me meditate at times and find them to be wonderful. The ones I use are locally made (in Richmond VA) and as well I make my own custom guided visualization CDs (not for sale, just for my use).

Michael Haskell

I also draw as a hobby, something I recently rediscovered from grade school and earlier and something that I had forgotten about completely until taking a drawing class in college. I’m more of a right-brainer by nature, so it’s the left braining that I’m more apt to try to focus on.

That said, one exercise I’ve found to be helpful in “getting the whole picture” of things is Edward De Bono’s ‘Thinking Caps’ (Six Thinking Hats). I try to exercise his paradigm when planning or troubleshooting things.

I don’t mind the questions, I think people should communicate as much as possible, especially in cases of development and understanding.

Comment: I’ve read several of De Bono’s books and love the concepts. I practice some modified versions of these when I brainstorm as an individual. I’ve not been successful applying the six hats in teams. My teams tend to have problems that need solutions that seem to benefit from other types of contrast brainstorming.

Next Up

I’ll continue to post on this topic as I learn more and as others provide their input. I will write a post about my practices for Brain Lateralization but that may be in a week two.

Book’s Mentioned In This Article

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.)

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection (Sherlock Holmes)

The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions

Six Thinking Hats

Achieving Excellence through Self-Actualization

Are you on the road to self-actualization. Are you striving to achieve excellence?

If you want to accelerate your self-actualization and achieve flow you should read on. Many people have found these two practices to be helpful on this vital journey!

1. Metacognition – thinking about your thinking (and then improving your thinking)
2. Intentional Brain Lateralization – being able to shift from left to right and back again (L-Mode – R-Mode shifting) when you want to

When you are skilled at these two practices and aligned with your strengths you will achieve flow routinely! And  you will be unstoppable! On to your own personal greatness! “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

This post is about Brain Lateralization. Maybe I’ll post something about Meta-cognition in the future but until then you can read Are You On the Road to Greatness?

The Question

Yesterday I posed this question on linkedin and sent the question to many of my contacts and friends. The responses are pouring in. And even though I’m sure I’ll get more, I wanted to summarize them here now for your benefit:

Do you have any special ways that you shift from left brain to right brain (L-Mode to R-Mode) to help solve problems?

Details: I’m taking Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain to help my creative process and am able to go R-Mode easily. But I’m hoping I can set up some exercises to help others that are L-Mode dominate so they can practice going R-Mode. You can see my drawings at http://vitaljourney.org/tag/drawing/

Why You Should Care About Brain Lateralization

If you are unfamiliar with the Left – Right Brain (L-Mode, R-Mode) brain dominance concepts you might want to visit wikipedia and this site at MIT. And for a really great write up, Betty Edward’s book, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain details the benefits of Right Brain thinking and is one of the best general explanations of Brain Lateralization.

We do know this:

• Most people are left brain thinkers (logical, analytical, verbal)
• Society tends to be oriented towards left brain thinking
• Solutions to complex problems require 1) left brain analysis of the problem (critical thinking) and left brain collection of information about the problem and potential solutions 2) right brain synthesis of the facts and data collected by the left brain and 3) right brain usage in the development of solutions
• Schools (K12), while acknowledging the importance of right brain thinking, tend to discourage right brain thinking
• Performance and visual artists (musicians, painters, sculptors, etc.) use the right brain extensively

And the kicker is that long term life satisfaction and happiness requires achievement of flow and when you are engaged in right brain thinking, you achieve flow. See the Dr. Martin Seligman’s video at the bottom of this post to learn more about long term happiness and flow.

Answers

And now for the answers. I have summarized and shortened some of the answers for brevity. Where I have permission I will highlight the person’s full name and blog URL.  My comments are noted as such below.

Cody

I’ve been using both sides of my brain since the time I started to really dig into the web… I would design with one app, and code in another. Constantly switching back and forth from Photoshop to vim. Color palettes to php… I think web developers/designers are folks that are forced to do this day in and day out.

Comment: I have to agree. My job as a web professional requires dramatic and sometimes extreme lateralization from left to right and back again.

Ann

Try the Whack on the Side of the Head books.

Tony

These days, I’m a professional photographer. Thus, my ability to switch from Left (managing the highly technical equipment of high end photography) to Right (to produce effective fashion and art) is crucial to my field. It’s understanding that the thought processes for the two are led by two different goals: The Left is lead by a desire for a define answer that is achieved through logical thinking while the Right is lead by emotions (my own and the “viewers’”). I have to switch from “technical solving” mode to “emotionally creative” mode in a split second and back again, sometimes even taking on tracks of thinking for both sides simultaneously.

How does one learn how to do this if not born with it? I have to train my assistants and other photographers to do this often. “Think” versus “Feel”. Think too much, you ruin the feeling. Feel too much, you have a hard time thinking and solving. Do both right and you’re brilliant. Again, I think that it must come from an understanding of how these things are different so that they are applied at the appropriate times and application. If I’m looking at art or creating something artistic, I must feel my way through it. How does it make me FEEL? If I need to solve a math problem, my feelings about it are totally irrelevant. I should follow a logical process in that event. So what do I suggest as practice for achieving such mental switching? Look at a lot of art and focus on how it makes you feel. Explore these feelings by thinking about the associations you are making to cause these feelings. You likely moving to Right and primed for creating something of your own. To make the trip back, freeze frame that mental mode and immediately look for something that must be solved logically and through a define process.

Here is an example that applies to me. I might open a fashion magazine or some form of artistic photography magazine and look at the images there. Right side: how does the image make me feel? How can I create something to evoke that same feeling? Left side: What equipment was used to make that image? What lighting and camera settings do I need to create that image?

Comment: I wanted to edit down Tony’s response but I left it whole because of the amount of useful information packed in his words.  Tony is a photographer who used to be a marketing expert and just picked up a camera one day and it felt natural. He is extraordinary in his talents.  When I worked with him years ago he was able to go extreme left and right. He continues that tradition.

Ami

Another R-brain exercise - sketch your non-dominant hand after taking one good look at it, then don’t look again til finished. Use a single unbroken line to do this.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a continuation of a series of posts about learning to draw using the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain concept. The last update was about drawing my first live model profile.

In the last two classes that concluded yesterday, we discussed how the Brain can interpret a small amount of detail and fill in the pieces, giving the viewer the ability to see the image intended by the artist.  Think R-Mode or right brain recognition of the image despite a lack of clear detail.  I’m not sure I said that in a clear way but an example will help.

Gustave Courbet a french realist painter in the 19th century, was known for one of his self-portraits that has informally been called the fisherman.  Note below the use of shadows and highlights and the seemingly small amount of information contained in the drawing. Yet, his self portrait is striking and memorable enough that many people recognize this painting, once they have been exposure to its beauty.

As an exercise in learning to draw with shadows and highlights we created a grounding (a dark shaded rectangle) using graphite and then began to erase and darken as needed. I “copied” Gustave’s famous painting upside down for 20 minutes or so and then flipped it over and added a little more detail. I worked about 10 more minutes and got to the drawing shown below.  When I set out on the exercise, I set a goal to draw as little as I can to see how quickly I could come up with a drawing that resembles the Fisherman. Or at least a drawing that can be recognized as a man in a hat with smoking a pipe.

I’m not sure my drawing look’s anything like Gustave’s but I do think it is a decent drawing given I had 30 minutes total in it, and it is my first highlight and shadow drawing.

At the conclusion of the class we started working on our self portrait. I have included an image of that drawing here for contrast.  This draft was done with about 30 minutes of drawing and a lot of set up time and juggling with the mirror and lighting.  In the next class we will spend 2 to 3 more hours on our self portrait.  So I do expect this to get a lot better. Lets hope so anyway!

I’m really enjoying the class and wish it would never end.  two more classes and then I’m done.  Hope to take the advanced colors class if it is taught in the summer.

The next article in this series is about drawing negative space.