[Dekard]

While working on my Computer Animation degree, I have an Animation Basics class which is using the "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" book by Betty Edwards, I'd suggest anyone with drawing talent and having a few issues with color and painting troubles to pick this book up.

The first thing she tells you 'anyone' can draw, you just need to know how to look at things as an artist, some are predisposed to talent, but anyone can draw with the right amount of information on how to view the objects.

Here's an example:
Five Basic Skills of Drawing:
One: Perception of Edges
Two: The Perception of Spaces
Three: The Perception of Relationships
Four: The Perception of Light & Shadows
Five: The Perception of the Whole.

There can be more the 5 as well but those are the basics skills of drawing, and until you get those skills down, you can't really tackle painting an object or using shadowing apporpriately. The progression for a person starting out should be:

From Line Drawings, to Shading, to adding Color, to Painting.

Just in my first few classes of this class and this book has helped my drawings 400%, and I felt I was fairly talented prior. I know take more time looking at the space around the objects and draw the positive and negative space then trying to draw a hand, once you realize it's a hand the symbolizm tries to take over and you lose the realism you were working for. Definitely a book I'm gonna keep around and add to my library after this class is over.. Good stuff!

[isthmus nekoi]

It's a pretty good book (although I've only skimmed through it - I heard from many teachers that it's very useful), and it certainly is true - drawing is less about drawing than it is about *seeing*...

Tricks the eyes (or rather, your biased neurons) like to play:

- Making things more vertical/horizontal
- Deemphasizing (sp!) empty space, emphasizing points of interest (ie which is why at first ppl tend to draw eyes/lips too large, and minimize the cheek area)
- oh there's more but I've forgotten them!

I like Bridgeman's life drawing series (although his ppl tend to get too blockish sometimes. His women can be scary!). Faigin's "Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression" is very useful. Not sure if I got the title right. It's something like that! Any other suggestions?

[razzak]

hey peeps, this talking about that book about drawing with the right side of the brain, actually reminded me of something that i figured when i was younger. a person (if right handed) estimates the middle of a line further to the right?! try it, draw a line and mark the middle and then get a ruler. if you know to which side youre leaning ff you can correct it when drawing. it helped me so i just thought someone out there might be interested in knowing

[marcuslm]

Is the 'New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' book really THAT good? A guy I knew went on and on about how much of a difference that book made in his drawing. I would love to hear from other people who have tried the book as well.

Marcus

[isthmus nekoi]

Marcus> I've skimmed through the exercises and IMO, the book is very good for beginners. The exercises help you deal w/common mistakes of perception. However, if you are already using tricks like plumb lines, negative space, point to point etc w/o really thinking about it anymore, I don't think the book would be all that benificial. Take a look at the exercises covered - you might have learned about them already. Hope this helps!

[liv the fish]

Drawing on the Right-side is probably the next best thing to having an excellent teacher if you're just starting out. Even if you've had some instruction in the past, you may want to skim through the book to see if there are any exercises you haven't heard about.

I'd also suggest that experienced artists go through the book, if they see their art feeling a bit tired or not quite right. Sometimes one starts to fall back on old symbolic methods rather than truely drawing what they see. Reminding yourself of the exercises you first learned to draw with will sometimes help break a bad habit.

Good luck,
l.t.f.