Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain

ISBN 0874770874 - out of print
ISBN 0874774241 - The New DrawingOnTheRightSideOfTheBrain
http://www.drawright.com/

DrawingOnTheRightSideOfTheBrain, by Betty Edwards, is a classic book about drawing. It has lots of exercises that progress gradually. People who say they can't draw can work their way through the book and, at the end, produce respectable portraits. It's a question of learning how to see and how to evaluate what you're drawing, but also of using some tricks.

Perhaps the most important trick is learning to draw the negative space, the space around the thing you're drawing. People often have trouble drawing things -- for instance, a nose -- because they think they know what it looks like, and they draw what they think it looks like rather than what they're seeing. When converting a view of three-dimensional objects into a two-dimensional representation, paying attention to the shapes and sizes of things that are not part of the objects helps tremendously to focus the mind on seeing rather than anticipating the symbols and archetypes you carry in your head.

If there's a programming metaphor in the importance of negative space, it probably has to do with testing at the boundaries and testing for expected error conditions.

-- DeanBandes?

Another metaphor might be drawn from seeing the problem for what it is, rather than categorizing it to the point where it's unrecognizable. See MentalStateCalledFlow for some discussion paralleling the hemisphere dominance which Edwards writes about. She also wrote a follow-up to this book called DrawingOnTheArtistWithin; I would not hesitate to recommend either book to any person interested in drawing, their own creativity, brain function, thought process, or pretty pictures. -- RobRix

This book draws heavily on the dual nature of the brain. Betty Edwards demonstrates that "drawing" is a metaphor for "seeing", and shows how "seeing" is a right-brain activity that can be practiced and developed by everyone (just like "writing"). She suggests that "drawing" is to "seeing" what "writing" is to "hearing".

It would be a mistake to view this book as only about making marks on paper.