RCBonayAtWork http://rcbonayatwork2.posterous.com Writing, Drawing and Working on the Right Side of My Brain posterous.com Tue, 13 Nov 2012 09:01:00 -0800 Learn How to Draw in Less Than an Hour http://rcbonayatwork2.posterous.com/learn-how-to-draw-in-less-than-an-hour http://rcbonayatwork2.posterous.com/learn-how-to-draw-in-less-than-an-hour

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Three or four chapters into Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, I was challenged to try her upside down drawing assignment. I smiled a wry smile as I read her claim that I would be pleased with the results of my effort. I started copying the upside down picture and about forty minutes later I was finished. I turned the drawing and the picture right side up for comparison. I was amazed at the results. I wanted to close the book and just start drawing everything I could get my hands on. Betty must have sensed this because she offered a second challenge that was a little more difficult. Not much, but just enough to convince me that I'd better stick around and read a few more chapters at least. She went on to explain the phenomenon of what I'd just experienced. What I learned is that it's important to understand three things about your brain. First, the left side of your brain is very good at what it does. Second, the left side of your brain is in charge most of the time. Third, the left side of your brain doesn't like to waste time. I also learned that these are good things most of the time but they can hinder the performance of tasks, such as drawing, that require access to the creative power of the right side of the brain.

The Right Brain for the Job

Let's conduct a little experiment to show just how good the left side of your brain is at what it does. The letters in the following sentence are all mixed up but I doubt you'll have any problem reading it:

The wlord wuold eb a bteter pclae fi ew lal ujts lneeard ot darw.

I find this fascinating! It clearly demonstrates the power of the left brain to solve simple puzzles quickly and efficiently freeing us up to move on to other things. Besides solving puzzles, another thing your left brain is good at is assigning symbols to things. For example, as far as the left side of your brain is concerned, the human head is an egg shape, the eye is an almond shape with a small circle in the middle, a wheel is a circle, the sun is a circle with triangles around it, and so on. When you try to draw any of these things, the left side of your brain, assuming that you want to perform this task as quickly and efficiently as possible, rushes in with the appropriate symbol. The right side of your brain, which may have been getting ready to help, retreats. And that's just the way the left side of your brain likes it. Get the "job" done and move on. But what if you wanted to shift to the right side of your brain because you agree that it's better suited to accurately draw the picture? One way you can do this is to present something to the left side of the brain that it doesn't understand. Something like the upside down picture.

Who's in Charge, You or Your Brain?

The left side of your brain might like to think it's in charge but it realizes that YOU are in charge. When you decide to perform a task, it assumes you want to do it in the most efficient and effective manner possible. When you sit down to draw a human face from memory, the left side of your brain believes that it has your best interest at heart. "Come on, good buddy", it says, "I got all the symbols you're gonna need for this here project!" So you start with the head. The left side of your brain has a symbol for that; it's called an egg (or a circle). In fact it also has a symbol that represents the nose, the mouth and everything else. Imagine a photograph or drawing of several men of equal height on a platform waiting for a train. Who appears tallest? The man in the foreground appears tallest. The man who is furthest away appears tiny in comparison. The left side of your brain is allowing you to see what you believe to be the truth. Use a ruler to measure the height of each man and you may be stunned to learn the truth that each man is the same height. Measuring is a great way to deny the left side of your brain its place at the drawing table when the right side of the brain is clearly the better candidate for the task. After all, even the left side of the brain will give up in the face of cold hard facts. If you can convince the left side of your brain that it is not the authority that it thinks it is, it will give up and let the right side of the brain take over. Are there other ways besides turning the picture upside down that will facilitate the shift over to the right side? Certainly; avoid calling things out by name as you act upon them. Instead of thinking "nose" when you're drawing the curves of the nose think in terms of the curvy line that you are drawing that starts halfway up the page and is exactly x number of inches from the weird curvy thing that I was drawing just a moment ago (don't call this body part it by its real name either).

The Right Side of Your Brain is a Terrible Thing to Waste

As I pointed out above, the left side of your brain hates to waste time. After all its main purpose is to take you where you want to go, based on the information that you've provided it, in the shortest amount of time possible. "I want to draw a wheel", you tell it and Wham - in five seconds you have the circular symbol for a wheel ready to apply to a sheet of paper. You look at your pathetic little wheel and acknowledge that while it certainly represents what you wanted to draw you see absolutely no reason to sign your name to your miserable masterpiece. The key here is to quiet the left side of your brain long enough to get the right side of your brain involved. One way you can do this is do deprive the left side of your brain access to its database of symbols. But how do you do this? Turning things upside down is one way to get the right side of your brain involved. (This may not work in the case of a wheel because an upside down wheel doesn't look that much different from one that is right side up. The left side of your brain will detect your attempt to deceive it and will conjure the circle symbol every time.) The left side of the brain considers this task, for which it doesn't have handy symbols to speed it along, as useless so it gives up allowing the right side of the brain to take action. It views this as a waste of time and it goes into an idle state ready to spring into action once you've come to your senses and begun to pursue a more meaningful task for which it is more suited.

Conclusion

We now know that the left side of your brain is very good at what it does, that it wants to be in charge most of the time, and that it doesn't like to waste time. We know that, as hard as it might be, there are times when we need to quiet the left side of the brain when the right side of the brain is the better resource. We now know that we can quiet the left side of the brain by simply tricking it into thinking that the task is a waste of time, or convincing it that our data can't be validated, or by convincing it that the right side of the brain is better for the job (which to the left side of the brain means the task is a waste of time). The good thing is that your brain works for you. You tell it what you want and it works to get it for you. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is available at your local library or you can purchase it on Amazon or almost any craft store. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1155828/GW_Cover.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4woTJ9dIMyOt Roland Bonay rcbonay@gmail.com Roland Bonay