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)

In September I met with my wonderful drawing teacher Nancy. Part of that meeting was for me to draw a hand, a self portrait and a face from memory. As you can see my drawings are somewhat child like.

Future Posts and this prior one shows the progress I’ve been making in just a few weeks of meeting once a week.

My Left Hand

Self Portrait

Oldest Daughter From Memory

I’m so excited. Seems I can draw. Who would have guessed. I’ve just completed the third class last night, where we learned some new techniques about edges and light. Through the first three classes there has been a lot of emphasis on the Right Brain and Left Brain and we have been practicing ways to go Right Brain (R-Mode).

Its starting to pay off. I drew the picture of the hand last night in about 1.25 hours. Unfortually I don’t have my before hand image yet. The instructor has all the preliminary drawings. As soon as I can I will scan and post all the images that I’ve drawn myself so you can see the progress. I’ll let this one speak for itself.

I woke up this morning feeling like a kid in a candy shop. I’m getting very excited about learning to draw, even at the age of 54.

You see it begins this way: A year ago I wrote down 118 life goals that I wanted to achieve before I die. Some goals were travel and adventure goals, some were seeing my favorite musicians while some were goals of philanthropy and community service. I’m happy to report that several of my simpler goals have been achieved and I’ve added significantly to the list.

One goals was to attend the Betty Edward’s “Drawing on the right Side of the Brain” course http://www.drawright.com/ and to significantly improve my ability to draw. Well this week I get to start a drawing course based in part on Betty’s work and put on by the University of Richmond’s (UR) School of Continuing Studies (SCS). Since I’m staff at UR the course is free! Can’t beat that deal can you?

Once I have a few drawings under my belt I’ll post some before and after samples and report on progress.