Illustration above: Bedroom curtains and blinds (7/6/24)

I recently stumbled upon an art instruction classic (well-known to millions of others since 1979): Dr. Betty Edwards’ “Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain.” Its title says it all.

The corpus callosum is the nerve bridge bundle that allows the brain’s left and right hemispheres to interact. Since each hemisphere tends to become highly specialized – i.e., left: language & logic vs. right: visual & emotional perception – interaction between the two halves makes for a nicely integrated whole life experience.

But as adults, that pesky left hemisphere’s tendency to dominate our thought patterns while engaged in a “task” imposes a challenging obstacle to drawing. It forces us to resort to language-influenced symbols of what we think things ought to look like as opposed to what we truly perceive them to be when we simply look. In a nutshell, that’s the core of her thesis.

Edwards lays this out in engaging detail and offers numerous step by step hands-on (hand-on?) exercises to demonstrate the point through one’s own direct personal experience. By getting the left-side out of our way, the right-side allows most anyone with functioning eyeballs to produce striking results.

While Edwards focuses on five key drawing concepts, I feel inclined to distill down her secret sauce as follows:

• STEP 1: Learn to ignore your left-brain’s urge to impose language and symbols (which you’d accepted and refined in your adolescence) in order to make room for your right-side to directly perceive what your eyes actually see.

• STEP 2: Draw that instead.

Being able to do so pays a bonus: By quieting that language/symbol-side and tapping into the perceptual/visual-side, one often gets lost in time and space. There’s a deeply relaxing and almost meditative zone that results. The boundary between what you’re seeing and what you’re drawing becomes blurred through an uninterrupted flow.

Sounds mystical? Actually, it’s not. It’s just the way our brains are typically wired – and can also be rewired. Experiencing this firsthand is remarkable, albeit fairly difficult to describe in words; then again, this ineffability shouldn’t be surprising as the experience isn’t happening on the language side.

Okay, but even if you accept her theory, practically speaking how does one actually go about keeping that chatty, intrusive left-side brain out of the mix?

That’s where Edwards’ cleverly crafted exercises come into play. Taken together, they constitute a set of actionable steps to learn how to accomplish this fascinating feat.

As Edwards explains the essence of the strategy:

“In order to access the right-hemisphere mode, you must present your brain with a task that your left brain will turn down.”

Being able to enjoy that frame of mind (wherein your left-brain gives up and bails out) becomes the unifying objective. Toward this end, along with her textbook she produced a companion workbook filled with extended exercises. It’s well worth the effort to work with the two books side-by-side.

Candidly, I’m still in the midst of this effort. But I’ll share some sketches I’d drawn since beginning to apply my new-found fondness for zoning out into this world of right-sided drawing…

Edwards strongly encourages some “before” sketches, including a self-portrait in the mirror, before reading her text. The idea is to see what kind of progress in realism is achieved. Granted, realism isn’t always the aim of sketching. But if you can draw something to look like it does in reality, it opens the door to play with style and composition in ways not otherwise fully accessible.

Being fairly compliant when given a task, I set out to draw a “before” self-portrait…

Clearly, I’d managed to capture my crazed maniacal madman look.

But then, after working through most of Edwards’ materials, I drew another self-portrait in the mirror as seen here…

I discovered that drawing oneself – this time with a 3/4 head-turn while looking in the mirror and sketching – involves some odd juggling. It’s also a uniquely challenging exercise that begins with some creepy self-absorption. But soon it becomes enveloping and you get lost in it.

As for the results? Well, although the “after” attempt seen above certainly looks more like a real person (me?) than some crazed lunatic (also me?), there’s a certain charm to the loose “line art” feel of the earlier effort. And that’s when it struck me…

To take it one step further (actually, one step backwards) I found that the half-completed line sketch (below) upon which the self-portrait above was based makes for a more interesting rendering. I think this is due primarily to the effect of line art on a drawing…

What’s more, while working on the line art sketch, I got totally lost in the experience. Translating the smallest elements of a face into countless strokes, focusing on each minute detail as seen in the mirror, it ceased being a face as such. The subject became an object.

It also ceased to be me; as if I’d never seen that particular face before. And I lost track of time. Edwards might suggest I had simply not perceived my face with that side of my brain before.

Moreover, I can’t say that the subsequent effort of shading and refining the line work after that point produced any similarly enjoyable experience. It was more of a technical chore to be finished than a creative source of relaxation and exploration. It’s as if from that point forward my left-brain had rushed back in to take over.

And while creative style is a matter of personal taste, this interim line sketch also happens to be my personal favorite type of rendering.

There’s something about loosely drawn sketch lines that I tend to prefer over an effort to reach for photo-realism. Rough lines leave more to the imagination – which tends to make for a more engaging visual experience. Just my $0.02.

Regardless, none of these sketches is a masterpiece. Yet they do go well beyond anything I could have previously drawn freehand. So the time spent working with Edwards’ books for just a few weeks feels like effort well spent.

Finally, separate but related…

Edwards cites a book which I’d bought myself back in high school called “The Zen of Seeing” by Frederick Franck (c. 1973). Having found my copy on our bookshelf, I just read it again – now 50 years later. Franckly, I’d struggled with it back then; today, it hits a lot closer to home.

In Franck’s artsy-illustrated style, he is essentially describing the same state that Edwards strives to invoke through her instruction. Sure, it’s somewhat longer winded than it needed to be (like much of the 1970s), but what a pleasant twist to spot this half-century old volume on my bookshelf.

Both are highly recommended to those who haven’t figured all this stuff out on their own. Despite five decades of floundering, that certainly includes me.