4.21

5

Jul 26, 2012

This is a workbook that goes with the main text, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain . It has more exercises than the main text (40 exercises, in fact). This workbook has minimal explanation compared with the main text-- the latter delves a great deal into brain hemisphere function and ways to access those parts that are best for drawing, whereas the workbook only focuses on actual drawing. So I think of the main text as the "teacher text," this workbook as the "student text," and the This is a workbook that goes with the main text, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain . It has more exercises than the main text (40 exercises, in fact). This workbook has minimal explanation compared with the main text-- the latter delves a great deal into brain hemisphere function and ways to access those parts that are best for drawing, whereas the workbook only focuses on actual drawing. So I think of the main text as the "teacher text," this workbook as the "student text," and the DVD as a crash course for both teacher and student. I recommend all three, especially if you're a homeschooler looking to incorporate art into your curriculum.

This workbook has a coil binding and is designed to be sketched directly into it (blank pages are provided after each of the exercises). At the back of the book is a plastic PicturePlane Viewfinder to cut out (which is one of the tools used with this drawing method). The author divides drawing into 5 basic skills: the perception of edges, the perception of spaces (negative space), the perception of relationships (sighting perspective & proportions), the perception of lights & shadows, and perception of the whole. This workbook provides multiples exercises for each skill. Each exercise briefly states the exercise's purpose, provides a list of materials needed, provides instructions and post-exercise remarks. Some of the exercises are the same as what you'll find in the main text and DVD, but there are many more that are new. An exercise or two per week would make a nice one-year drawing curriculum for homeschoolers or for anyone wanting an independent drawing program.

By the way, if you want a hassle-free way to get all the drawing materials, go to the author's website. We love the Portfolio Workshop Kit.

See my related review of the main text here. ...more

4

Nov 14, 2018

Happily there are now endless outstanding books and online courses to teach yourself to draw, and this is one of them.

Here we have forty exercises across a range of subjects and mediums (pen and ink to crayon). Actually, one of my favourite lessons from the book is not one of these exercises but a piece of advice that comes right at the beginning: How to fight procrastination.

We all have these great plans to set aside a day a week or an hour a day to practice drawing, but it never happens – Happily there are now endless outstanding books and online courses to teach yourself to draw, and this is one of them.

Here we have forty exercises across a range of subjects and mediums (pen and ink to crayon). Actually, one of my favourite lessons from the book is not one of these exercises but a piece of advice that comes right at the beginning: How to fight procrastination.

We all have these great plans to set aside a day a week or an hour a day to practice drawing, but it never happens – something always gets in the way. I have no idea where that inertia comes from, because once I actually start drawing the time flies by in pure enjoyment of the process. But the key is how to get to actually sitting at the desk with a pencil in your hand?

Edwards says forget about timetabling drawing time. Instead just set a minimum goal which she calls the ‘two minute miracle.’ The idea is that you set yourself tiny, easily-achievable goals whereby you coax yourself, kind of trick yourself, into starting to draw. So you say to yourself, ‘Ok, I’m only going to look at what the next exercise is.’ ‘Ok, I’m just going to lay in the edges of the drawing.’ And before you know it you’ve already started putting pencil to paper, and then it’s easy to forget all those pressing excuses to do anything else but.

It reminds me of some exercise advice I saw, where a gym instructor said the same kind of thing about setting minimum goals: Just turning up to the gym, even if you sit there and read a paper for 20 minutes, is a good start. Before long once you find you’re actually there it’s so much easier to start exercising.

The exercises I found most useful were:

Drawing upside down
This is straight copying an upside-down drawing (it works better with line drawings), which really forces you to look at the relationship between lines and shapes, to look at negative space, and ignore all those ‘symbols’ floating around in your brain and making inaccurate shortcuts in your drawing. This really helps you to ‘unlearn’ what you think you know and draw what’s really there.

Drawing negative space
This concentrates on just drawing the negative space around a chair and a bunch of flowers in a vase, leaving the flowers themselves blank. This reminder to look at negative space is useful because you often forget, even when in the ‘trance-like’ drawing mode, to stop concentrating on discrete objects and look at everything as being equally worthy of consideration. Plus when you concentrate on negative space it does make your drawings more vivid, ‘drawing that emphasize negative spaces are a pleasure to look at, perhaps because the compositions are strong (emphasis on negative space always improves composition) and the spaces and shapes are unified.’

Drawing the head in profile
‘Eye level to chin is the same distance as back of the eye to the back of the ear.’ Drawing profiles is good for practising edges, spaces and relationships. Good to use negative spaces when you run into trouble. And when ‘drawing the hair, squint your eyes to see the larger highlights and the shadows. Avoid drawing symbolic hair – repeated parallel or curly lines. Hair forms a shape, focus on drawing that shape.’

Edwards herself says that she found one of the most useful to be this one:

Pure contour drawing
Sit at a table, with your pencil in hand on the sketchpaper. Now turn in your seat 90 degrees away from the paper (so that you can’t see your drawing) and look at the palm of your other hand. Concentrate on drawing the line on one square inch in the palm of your hand.

She says that this is the most efficient way for preparing the brain for visual tasks. The verbal, system-based ‘left’ side of the brain switches off at such a boring task, allowing the visual ‘right’ side of the brain to take over.

I have a different, but related, way of doing the same thing: I begin my drawings with my non-drawing hand (which is my right, as I’m left handed). This takes so much concentration in basic motor control that I kind of phase out anyway, and I’m left with an interesting sketch I can refine with my drawing hand afterward.

Drawing on the picture plane
This one is for those who haven’t got the hand of foreshortening yet, and probably of great use to beginning or younger students. You balance a hard, transparent plastic sheet on your non-drawing hand, then use a wipeable marker to draw your hand as you see it directly onto the plastic sheet. Then place the completed drawing on a white background so you can see it properly.

Foreshortening and the picture plane are concepts that are like a switch, they seem incomprehensible till you grasp the idea and then once you have the epiphany it’s just a matter of refining your skill.

On the cover it says this books is ‘guided practice in the five basic skills of drawing.’ What are they, according to Betty Edwards?

1 Edges
Contours. She defines ‘contours’ in the beginning as ‘a line that represents the shared edges of shapes, or shapes and spaces.’ What a lay person would call ‘outlines.’

2 Spaces
Meaning ‘negative spaces,’ instead of looking at the table legs, try and draw the shape of the space between the table legs.

3 Relationships
Perspective (portraying three dimensions on a two dimensional surface) and proportion (the size, location, or amount of one element in relation to another).

4 Light and shadow
At a basic level, this is ‘shading,’ using light to bring out the three dimensional portrayal of the subject. Can also mean the communication of time, atmosphere and mood. In traditional art instruction there are four aspects of light and shadow: Highlights (the lightest lights), cast shadows (the darkest darks), reflected lights (not as light as the highlights) and crest shadows (the shadow that falls between the highlight and reflected light, not as dark as cast shadow).

5 ‘Gestalt’
‘The “thingness” of the thing.’ This one is perhaps a bit difficult to explain eloquently, but I think is actually the most essential element, especially in heavily stylised drawing. Does this drawing convey the essential qualities of a bicycle, a koi carp or Albert Einstein? This is what I love about illustration, in that true masters can capture their subject with just a few strokes of the pen.

...more

5

Jan 09, 2019

No matter how long you've been drawing, you can always benefit from reviewing your fundamentals. I thought I was fairly good when I started, having an art degree and over two decades of experience under my belt, but the portraits I drew at the beginning and end of the class look like they were done by two different people.
Some people may say that Edwards only teaches you to draw from observation, but that is the foundation on which all imaginative drawing is built.

For my part, I cannot recommend No matter how long you've been drawing, you can always benefit from reviewing your fundamentals. I thought I was fairly good when I started, having an art degree and over two decades of experience under my belt, but the portraits I drew at the beginning and end of the class look like they were done by two different people.
Some people may say that Edwards only teaches you to draw from observation, but that is the foundation on which all imaginative drawing is built.

For my part, I cannot recommend this book highly enough, regardless of your perceived ability to draw, and will be recommending it to all my students. ...more

0

Nov 28, 2007

Drawing is fun. A refreshing change from daily activities, mainly at work, which require logical and verbal side of the brain :-)
Although not a good drawer (yet) myself, this activity has given me the ability to see the world differently.
This book provide an interesting method to follow. Another frontier to explore!

5

Oct 10, 2008

Companion workbook to the actual book. I recommend getting both together, very helpful.