I’ve been meaning to write for a while about the drawing class I’ve been taking once a week. I’ve attended four classes so far. The last one will be this week.

It’s been pretty interesting. I don’t know that the results have been as dramatic as I might have hoped, but nonetheless it is good to make the attempt, and my drawing has shown some improvement, I think.

These first drawings are pre-instruction. The instructor wanted us to have something to evaluate our later drawings against.

These next two drawings are examples of drawing from some samples that the instructor handed out. The trick here is that we had to draw them upside down. The idea is that when you look at the originals upside down you stop seeing or thinking about what the picture is actually about, and instead see just the shapes and lines.

Much of the first class is geared around the idea of disconnecting the left hemisphere of the brain and bringing the right brain to the fore. The theory is that the left brain is the portion of the brain that controls language and logic, and the right brain is the visual oriented half, and that we need to train ourselves to activate that right side way of thinking. There are assorted tricks for trying to do this, like drawing something upside down.

So these are the results from class one. I’ll post the results from some of the subsequent classes soon, but I wanted to give everyone the chance to comment on how pathetic these are first.

The class is based on the book, “The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards.