Drawing (and Healing) on the Right Side of the Brain
I’m proud of myself , y’all.
This isn’t the best thing anyone has ever drawn (the teeth bug me) BUT! y’all this is some serious progress. I’d been thinking (for way too long) that it would be nice to improve my drawing skills, so I started on bags and was eventually going to work my way around to the human figure. Then, for twenty cents at my favorite Goodwill, I found this book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Dr. Betty Edwards.
Dr. Betty Edwards uses her studies of brain research to inform her drawing instruction. And this book is basically an 8 week workshop that centers on the idea that learning to draw is just learning to see properly and record that information. Dr. Edwards believes that drawing is a a skill as learnable to anyone with basic hand-eye coordination as threading a needle.
Avoidance Through the Years
More than that though, some of y’all know that I believe in manifesting because it seems to be a super power of mine- except in two specific areas of my life. In trying to unblock myself, I realized that my inability to draw was just essentially me not giving it an actual effort for because I hated when things turned out ugly. When I first started studying art, I stuck to collages, abstractions and 3D pieces because I didn’t have to draw. Then, in fashion school, I’d draw my croquis without faces because “the clothes are what mattered” when really it was the fact that my faces looked too juvenile (Dr. Edwards says that the drawing skills of most adults are arrested at the level they reached around the age of nine or ten).
Later, when I started to work on my illustration skills well after I was out of school, I started with bags and shoes ”because I was an accessory designer” when, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, it’s because bags and shoes are basic geometry and less scary than faces. It’s hard to mess up a series of rectangles and curved lines, but the idea of striving for realistic representation of a face and not being able to achieve it was just beyond what I was ready for. I was actually not trying for fear of failure.
Manifesting Isn’t All Positive
Now, I’ll let you use your imagination when thinking about how living sans conviction in an area of my creative practice like that for over a decade would bleed into how I showed up for myself and the people I love (and my freelance career, and nurturing budding friendships, and how I move through the world and you get the picture). Manifesting, as it turns out, isn’t just wanting something positive and wishing it into existence. My thoughts and actions, guided by my subconscious beliefs and fears, were making me a mediocre artist, person and friend.
Learning to draw- that is, learning to be intentional, see clearly then patiently and accurately transmit what I am seeing to paper- has been an exercise for my own well-being. Spring is gonna be glorious.
What are you working on right now?