Hello, Friends! It’s time to dive into another book. This one’s a classic! Everyone knows The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. I’ve had this book for a while, but I never actually did all the exercises, in order, cover to cover, until now. Here’s what I found:
First off, I’ll leave the theory on left and right brain thinking to the neuroscientists. Edwards herself addresses this by saying,
“The theory and methods presented in my book have proven empirically successful. In short, the method works, regardless of the extent to which future science may eventually determine exact location and confirm the degree of separation of brain functions in the two hemispheres.” (pg. XXIV)
That’s as future proof as this book can get!
With that said, the rest of the book does a great job at doing what it should – teaching you how to draw what you actually see, not what you think you see! It’s designed for people who think they can’t draw, but really they’re just struggling to reach an “altered state of awareness” (R-mode, Flow, whatever you want to call it). Even for people who already know how to draw, many times they also start succumbing to using the “symbols” they’ve stored in their brain and muscle memory. I think this is why you often see a lot of drawings or paintings by an artist where the faces all look very similar (or they could be using the same models over and over).
This book is entirely dedicated to teaching you how to perceive things in real life (and record them via drawing) by telling you to hush your “left brain” (i.e. getting in the zone). Edwards does an awesome job teaching perception skills that give people a new perspective on their drawing abilities and is especially good for people who need a lot of logical explanations about what stops them from drawing well and how to get around that. It works for people whose flow mode might be a little more resistant. After this book, the more directly hands-on books that have less theory will become easier.
Honestly, this is one of the best how-to books I’ve ever read because she tries to be as clear as possible. The instructional steps are numbered and detailed and prior to every new exercise, there are demonstrations to show you the reasoning behind everything. These are things like having you measure (via sighting) your own head in front of a mirror while learning the proportions of a human head.
Edwards claims that drawing from life is made of only 5 basic skills, which are useful perceptual skills that are not specific only to drawing (there’s at least a chapter dedicated to each of these):
- Perception of Edges
- Perception of Spaces
- Perception of Relationships
- Perception of light and shadows
- Perception of the whole, or gestalt
With two additional skills needed for imaginative/expressive drawing:
- Drawing from memory
- Drawing from imagination
The book doesn’t really cover the last two skills, sparing only a few pages for each.
I can attest, the methods she uses works. By the end of chapter 10 (doing all of the main exercises), I realized how much my brain actually hinders my view of what’s truly there. Something I’ve become more conscious of.
The portrait drawing I did at the end was miles better than the one I did at the beginning of the book! Sure enough, my pre-conceptions of myself (I thought I had wide-set eyes, huge nostrils, and an abnormally large lower lip, etc.) were preventing me from seeing what was actually there. Although my final self-portrait still needs improvement, the result was a lot closer to reality. From the measurements in the book and the ones done in the mirror, I realized that my eyes were not wide-set. They were, in fact, just average, among other things. It’s almost as if I could see myself objectively now.
Still, explanations on how to better see values would have been nice and the chapter on color was weak. The colored pages were not even in the right chapter.
Some additional lessons learned:
What we think is bigger or more important looks bigger, what we think is small or unimportant looks smaller than they actually are. Also, we draw what we think things look like, not what they actually are.
The General Proportions of the Human Head (in front view and 3/4ths view) in Chapter 10 is gold!
TL;DR – The Bottom Line
4/5
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Favorite Quote: “Keeping the real goal in mind, let us begin to fashion the key.” Pg. 6
Type of Book: Art Instruction / Education
Author: Betty Edwards
Published: 1979-1999 (New Edition)
The Good: Solid lessons and exercises on drawing. Well worth the time invested.
The Bad: I’ll be honest, the writing can be a very dry sometimes. The walls of texts can be difficult to read because it’s kind of boring. Color and Value explanations were weaker than the rest of the book. Color pages were also in a random place (wrong chapter).