Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain Archives

Drawing Perspective

October 15, 2015

I accidentally skipped a chapter today and leapt to the one about Perspectives. I learned about the concept of Vanishing Points and Converging Lines. Here's our library (minus many details like the view outside the window, the blinds, and the carpet.) Those cabinets frustrated me the most, and there is an obvious lack of shadow grading. Why can't I see the different levels of darkness clearly? My one-point perspectiveOur library with a sofa, a TV on the left, and a reclining office chair I was wondering w[...]

alberti / art / artist / Betty Edwards / brunelleschi / contour / drawing / Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain / edges / foreshortening / graphite / hands / highlights / holbein / pencil / picture plane / shadows / van gogh / WIP

Drawing Hands

October 14, 2015

Quick update regarding my progress on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The chapter I'm on (6) talked about edges, and it taught a technique called Contour Drawing, which encouraged focusing on capturing the details of a subject by never taking your eyes off it. Not even to look at what you're drawing. That was fairly mind boggling, and I'm not sure if it did anything for me, but I hope it did. I just finished a section that introduced the concept of a picture plane, an imaginary "window" artis[...]

art / artist / Betty Edwards / drawing / Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain / exercise / Igor Stravinsky / learning / Picasso / portrait / practice / progress / reading / skill / step by step / WIP / work in progress

Practice Makes Progress

October 12, 2015

Almost a week since I did the first drawing exercises, following instructions from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I'm now on chapter 4. (I switched editions, and "The Definitive, 4th Edition" is a friendlier, less scholarly read.) This chapter has the exercise that Chris had described and got me curious: copying an image upside down. The book proposes that seeing an image right-side up automatically triggers our Left Brain to assign labels to everything, and with those labels come our own interpretati[...]

art / Betty Edwards / books / Chef's Classics / drawing / Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain / exercise / food styling / inspire / learning / portrait / project / skill / step by step / WIP / work in progress

Reading/Drawing/Styling

October 6, 2015

If there's anything that can be done one day at a time, it's learning. I advocate the thinking that anything can be learned, even skills that people insist are dependent on talent, like singing, dancing, and writing. Sure, talent makes it so that there is a predisposition to a skill, but with enough attention to the right procedure and plenty of practice, I think every skill can be developed. I've always envied visual artists, those that can replicate the world around us, and especially those that can tra[...]