drawing
Hi! Are you a new or recent visitor to my blog? I hope you stick around and have a bit of a read. To make it easier to keep up to date with new content, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Of course, feedback is always appreciated and leaving a comment is a great way for me to come and check out your site.
I have never thought of myself as a person who can draw. I am determined to work on this in the next few months (years?) though and train my brain. I bought some decent pencils in different hardnesses and checked a few drawing instruction books out of the library yesterday.
I got out an old drawing journal that hadn’t seen the light of day since 2005 and flicked through it. Some of the work in there was okay and some was just awful. They say that drawing is all about SEEING and I know that the worst examples I had done back then were the times that I stopped trying to see and just gave up - letting my left brain do it’s lumpy bumpy thing.
Drawing well (or rather, drawing what they see) comes easily to some people but I believe that this is something that can be learned. The techniques of drawing - the understanding of light and shade and how important this is to the realism of the piece, relative sizing and perspective, balance and all the rest.
Those techniques can all be learned and with practice may become second nature. It is harder to retrain your brain - to turn off the “I can’t draw” voice within and have the determination to follow through with the learning, even when it’s hard work.
While watching TV the other night I paused the machine and sat on the couch and drew the newsreader while she was in freeze frame. I really tried to draw only what I saw and I worked hard at not letting the left side of my brain in on any of the action. My drawing turned out okay - certainly not perfect but not too bad.
(drawn with pencil and paper then scanned and coloured digitally)
There was one time in particular that I noticed the effect of left/right brainness: I had been going along quite well, doing a decent job of her hair, face, eyes (though they were a bit wonky) and clothing and then I came to her hands and I instantly felt myself tense up and then turn off. Before I knew it my left brain had kicked in and I had just drawn a blobby toddler’s version of a hand. I had to really stop and try hard to draw just what I saw and it turned out a lot better than giving up and letting my left brain take over.
subscribe to
