This is a continuation of prior posts about my experiences with learning to Draw using the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Technique. See Previous posts

Learning to Draw at Age 54 - Update 4 - Exercises at Home

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

Learning to Draw at Age 54 - Update 2 - Preinstruction Drawings

Learning to Draw at Age 54 - Update 1 - The Hand

Learning to Draw at age 54

By the way I’m going to leave the title Learning to Draw at Age 54 but I just turned 55 on 10/12/08. Happy Birthday to me! LOL.

This drawing was just a quick practice of perspective techniques. I tool engineering drawing back in High School and college so this was an easy technique to grasp. In the next class we are going to spend 3 hours doing a more detailed perspective drawing. When I get a chance I will post that drawing as well.

Perspective Of Open Door drawn on October, 20, 2008

After drawing my hand in the third class, I came home and practiced on some items in my home that week. I spent about 45 minutes on the apple and about an hour on the Crepe Myrtle. I love both, at least given where I started in September. However, I hate the shadow in the Crepe Myrtle drawing! It looks like rabbit ears!

Apple on wooden table drawn on October 1, 2008

Crepe Myrtle in Vase drawn on October 5, 2008

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.