It turns out that the whole right/left brain thing is likely not true. The good news is the exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain are still valid. It doesn’t matter where things happen in the brain, what’s important is that you turn off all the impatient symbolic, verbal, and habitual parts of your brain while you draw.
For this exercise I had look at a drawing of Stravinsky by Picasso upside-down, and reproduce it upside-down. The idea is that drawing upside-down prevents you from using all your habitual drawing shortcuts. It seemed to work for me, though for the hands and face I could feel myself not looking at the source drawing and reverting to left-brain “shortcut” mode.
Mindfulness is hard.
6 Comments ↓
Nice work!
Thanks!
we are doing this at school at the moment. mine’s come out really good
Cool Safron. Can you post it somewhere? If not, send it to me and I’ll post it.
i am a young aspiring artist and i am fascinated with drawing hands and eyes. i feel that they are the parts of the body that convey the most emotion. any exercises that you do to help you with drawing these specific body parts?
Don’t know any specific exercises, but there’s always Practice, practice, practice. Doing them upside down really does help.