I love to tell my students about the time I was 16 and took course at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia on a scholarship one summer. I would trek down to Philly on the trains with my huge newsprint sketchbooks to stand at an easel for three hours and do life drawings. As if that wasn't enough, my professor had us doing a sketchbook assignment each night. So after I finished my waitress job, I would curl up with my sketchbook and draw again that day. Really throwing my learning curve into high gear.
The beauty of the sketchbook assignments was that we were trying something completely new. Something I had never tried before and something I had never heard of... reaching the other side of my brain!My more creative side of my brain! And all I had to do was teach my other hand to draw.... wait that doesn't sound that easy.
It wasn't.
Every night for two weeks, i drew both my hands and both my feet. When I drew my left hand and foot, I used my right hand. When I drew my right hand and foot, I used my LEFT hand. ( and yes if you are left handed this will help you too!)
This theory of learning to draw are based on the book : Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.
https://www.drawright.com/theory
The first set of drawings was the normal experience of sketching and trying to draw hands and feet. I drew the way I had been taught to draw my whole life. I used past knowledge like riding a bike... it just came to me. Or at least I thought it did. When I switched hands, I reverted back to the days of childhood when you are learning that your hand has the ability to make a mark on a page. Yes, most of us don't remember those days we were so young. Yet, here I was wiser and able to retrain those ways of thinking, reprogram those braincells, rework the way I looked at line, shape, form, shadows, etc. I took the time to re-learn how I made art, how my brain communicated with my hand, and how my eyes saw the world in relation to what I put on the page.
Ok... don't doubt me.. try it... take the challenge.
I will post my first drawing here. Take a look. Each day I will post my next drawing. Yes, I kept those sketchbooks all these years... not hundreds of years .... but many years. You will keep yours too!
You can do it! I believe in you!
(pencil is fine, but if you have charcoal or pastel try that too)
Email me your pictures, I would love to see your progress. And feel free to pass this on.
Have you tried adding little left handed things to your life while you
ReplyDeletedo this? Eat all your meals with your left hand? Brush your teeth with
your left hand. Helps with the muscle workout and doing things that
you learned as a little kid, relearning with the other hand. :)
Imagine after 3 weeks what you will be able to do!