The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards Read Free Book Online Page B

sculpture.
    With this information about the symbol system in mind, you may want to add a few more notes on the back of your drawings. Then, put all three drawings away for safekeeping. Do not look at them again until after you have completed my course and have learned to see and draw.

Student showing: A preview of before-and-after drawings
    Now I would like to show you some drawings done by my students. The drawings show typical changes in students’ drawing ability from the first lesson (before instruction) to the last lesson. Most of these students attended five-day workshops, eight hours a day for the five days. Both the Pre-instruction and Post-instruction drawings are self-portraits, drawn by students observing their own images in mirrors. As you can see, the Before-and-After drawings in the student examples demonstrate that the students have transformed their ways of seeing and drawing. The changes are significant enough that it almost seems as though two different persons have done the drawings.

    The drawings on this page and the following page show Before-and-After drawings of an entire five-day class, held in Seattle, August 4, 1997, to August 8, 1997.

    Drawings from the five-day Seattle class, continued.
    Learning to perceive is the basic skill that the students acquired. The change you see in their ability to draw possibly reflects an equally significant change in their ability to see. Regard the drawings from that standpoint: as a visible record of the students’ improvement in perceptual skills.
    On pages 19-20 I present Before-and-After drawings by an entire class, a group of adult students in Seattle, Washington. Looking at the “Before” drawings, you will see that students came to the five-day class with different levels of existing drawing skills and backgrounds in art. The “After” drawings, done five days later, however, show a remarkably consistent high level of skills. This overall success rate, I believe, demonstrates our goal with every group: that every student will gain high-level drawing skills regardless of their existing (or non-existing) skill level.

Expressing yourself in drawing: The nonverbal language of art
    The purpose of this book is to teach you basic skills in seeing and drawing. The purpose of this book is not to teach you to express yourself, but instead to provide you with the skills that will release you from stereotypic expression. This release in turn will open the way for you to express your individuality—your essential uniqueness— in your own way, using your own particular drawing style.
    If, for a moment, we could regard your handwriting as a form of expressive drawing, we could say that you are already expressing yourself with a fundamental element of art: line.
    “The art of archery is not an athletic ability mastered more or less through primarily physical practice, but rather a skill with its origin in mental exercise and with its object consisting in mentally hitting the mark.
    “Therefore, the archer is basically aiming for himself. Through this, perhaps, he will succeed in hitting the target—his essential self.”
    —Herrigel
    On a sheet of paper, right in the middle of the sheet, write your own name the way you usually sign your name. Next, regard your signature from the following point of view: you are looking at a drawing which is your original creation—shaped, it is true, by the cultural influences of your life, but aren’t the creations of every artist shaped by such influences?
    Every time you write your name, you have expressed yourself through the use of line. Your signature, “drawn” many times over, is expressive of you, just as Picasso’s line is expressive of him. The line can be “read” because, in writing your name, you have used the nonverbal language of art. Let’s try reading a line. There are signatures in the margin. All are the same name: Luther Gibson. Tell me, what is the first Luther Gibson like?

    You would probably