Edwards Betty. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

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they will give up art forever. They want their drawings to match

what they see, and they want to know how to do that.

I believe that children at this age love realism because they

are trying to learn how to see. They are willing to put great

energy and effort into the task if the results are encouraging. A

few children are lucky enough to accidentally discover the secret:

how to see things in a different (R-mode) way. I think I was one of

those children who, by chance, stumbles on the process. But the

majority of children need to be taught how to make that cognitive

shift. Fortunately, we are now developing new instructional

methods, based on recent brain research, which will enable

teachers to help satisfy children's yearning for seeing and draw-

ing skills.

How the symbol system, developed in childhood,

influences seeing

Now we are coming closer to the problem and its solution. First,

what prevents a person from seeing things clearly enough to draw

them?

The left hemisphere has no patience with this detailed per-

ception and says, in effect, "It's a chair, I tell you. That's enough to

know. In fact, don't bother to look at it, because I've got a ready-

made symbol for you. Here it is; add a few details if you want, but

don't bother me with this looking business."

And where do the symbols come from? From the years of

childhood drawing during which every person develops a system

of symbols. The symbol system becomes embedded in the mem-

ory, and the symbols are ready to be called out, just as you called

them out to draw your childhood landscape.

The symbols are also ready to be called out when you draw a

face, for example. The efficient left brain says, "Oh yes, eyes.

Here's a symbol for eyes, the one you've always used. And a nose?

Yes, here's the way to do it." Mouth? Hair? Eyelashes? There's a

symbol for each. There are also symbols for chairs, tables, and

hands.

To sum up, adult students beginning in art generally do not

"By the time the child can draw

more than a scribble, by age three

or four years, an already well-

formed body of conceptual knowl-

edge formulated in language

dominates his memory and con-

trols his graphic work.... Draw-

ings are graphic accounts of

essentially verbal processes. As an

essentially verbal education gains

control, the child abandons his

graphic efforts and relies almost

entirely on words. Language has

first spoilt drawing and then swal-

lowed it up completely."

— Written in 1930 by

psychologist Karl Buhler

DRAWING ON MEMORIES: YOUR HISTORY AS AN ARTIST

"I must begin, not with hypothesis,

but with specific instances, no mat-

ter how minute."

— Paul Klee

really see what is in front of their eyes—that is, they do not per-

ceive in the special way required for drawing. They take note of

what's there, and quickly translate the perception into words and

symbols mainly based on the symbol system developed through-

out childhood and on what they know about the perceived object.

What is the solution to this dilemma? Psychologist Robert

Ornstein suggests that in order to draw, the artist must "mirror"

things or perceive them exactly as they are. Thus, you must set

aside your usual verbal categorizing and turn your full visual

attention to what you are perceiving—to all of its details and how

each detail fits into the whole configuration. In short, you must

see the way an artist sees.

Fig. 5-19. Albrecht Dürer, Study for

the Saint Jerome (1521). One of the

L-mode functions is to screen out a

large proportion of incoming per-

ceptions. This is a necessary

process to enable us to focus our

thinking and one that works very

well for us most of the time. But

drawing requires that you look at

something for a long time, perceiv-

ing lots of details, registering as

much information as possible—

ideally, everything, as Albrecht

Diirer tried to do here.

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

Given proper instruction, young

children can easliy learn to draw.

These examples are by third-grade

children, age eight.

DRAWING ON MEMORIES: YOUR HISTORY AS AN ARTIST

"Art is a form of supremely delicate

awareness... meaning at-oneness,

the state of being at one with the

object.... The picture must all

come out of the artist's inside.... It

is the image that lives in the con-

sciousness, alive like a vision, but

unknown."

— D. H. Lawrence, the

English writer, speaking

about his paintings

Again, the key question is how to accomplish that cognitive

L->R shift. As I said in Chapter Four, the most efficient way

seems to be to present the brain with a task the left brain either

can't or won't handle. You have already experienced a few of

those tasks: the Vase/Faces drawings and the upside-down draw-

ing. And to some extent, you have already begun to experience

and recognize the alternate state of right-hemisphere mode. You

are beginning to know that while you are in that slightly different

subjective state of mind, you slow down so that you can see more

clearly.

As you think back over experiences with drawing since you

started this book and over experiences of alternative states of

consciousness you may have had in connection with other activi-

ties (freeway driving, reading, etc., mentioned in Chapter One),

think again about the characteristics of that slightly altered state.

It is important that you continue to develop your awareness and

recognition of R-mode state.

Lewis Carroll described an analo-

gous shift in Alice's adventures in

Through the Looking Glass:

"Oh, Kitty, how nice it would be if

we could only get through into

Looking Glass House! I'm sure it's

got, oh! such beautiful things in it!

Let's pretend there's a way of get-

ting through into it, somehow,

Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has

got all soft like gauze, so that we

can get through. Why, it's turning

to a mist now, I declare! It'll be

easy enough to get through...."

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

Let's review the characteristics of the R-mode one more time.

First, there is a seeming suspension of time. You are not aware of

time in the sense of marking time. Second, you pay no attention

to spoken words. You may hear the sounds of speech, but you do

not decode the sounds into meaningful words. If someone speaks

to you, it seems as though it would take a great effort to cross

back, think again in words, and answer. Furthermore, whatever

you are doing seems immensely interesting. You are attentive and

concentrated and feel "at one" with the thing you are concentrat-

ing on. You feel energized but calm, active without anxiety. You

feel self-confident and capable of doing the task at hand. Your

thinking is not in words but in images and, particularly while

drawing, your thinking is "locked on" to the object you are per-

ceiving. On leaving R-mode state, you do not feel tired, but

refreshed.

Our job now is to bring this state into clearer focus and under

greater conscious control, in order to take advantage of the right

hemisphere's superior ability to process visual information and to

increase your ability to make the cognitive shift to R-mode at

will.

"The development of an Observer

can allow a person considerable

access to observing different iden-

tity states, and an outside observer

may often clearly infer different

identity states, but a person him-

self who has not developed the

Observer function very well may

never notice the many transitions

from one identity state to another."

— Charles T. Tart

Alternate States of

Consciousness, 1977

DRAWING ON MEMORIES: YOUR HISTORY AS AN ARTIST

Getting Around

Your Symbol System:

Meeting Edges and

Contours

"To empty one's mind of all thought

and refill the void with a spirit

greater than oneself is to extend

the mind into a realm not accessi-

ble by conventional processes of

reason."

— Edward Hill

The Language of Drawing,

1966

E HAVE REVIEWED YOUR CHILDHOOD ART and the

development of the set of symbols that formed your

childhood language of drawing. This process paralleled the

development of other symbol systems: speech, reading, writing,

and arithmetic. Whereas these other symbol systems formed use-

ful foundations for later development of verbal and computa-

tional skills, childhood drawing symbols seem to interfere with

later stages of art.

Thus, the central problem of teaching realistic drawing to

individuals from age ten or so onward is the persistence of mem-

orized, stored drawing symbols when they are no longer appro-

priate to the task. In a sense, L-mode unfortunately continues to

"think" it can draw long after the ability to process spatial, rela-

tional information has been lateralized to the right brain. When

confronted with a drawing task, the language mode comes rush-

ing in with its verbally linked symbols. Then afterward, ironically,

the left brain is all too ready to supply derogatory words of judg-

ment if the drawing looks childlike or naive.

In the last chapter I said that an effective way to "set aside"

the dominant left verbal hemisphere and to "bring forward" your

nondominant right brain, with its visual, spatial, relational style,

is to present your brain with a task that the left brain either can't

or won't work at. We have used the Vase/Faces drawings and

upside-down drawings to illustrate this process. Now we'll try

another, more drastic strategy that will force a stronger cognitive

shift and set aside your L-mode more completely.

Nicolaides's contour drawing

I've called the method of the next exercise "Pure Contour Draw-

ing," and your left hemisphere is probably not going to enjoy it.

Introduced by a revered art teacher, Kimon Nicolaides, in his 1941

book, The Natural Way to Draw, the method has been widely used

by art teachers. I believe that our new knowledge about how the

brain divides its workload provides a conceptual basis for under-

standing why Pure Contour Drawing is effective as a teaching

method. At the time of writing his book, Nicolaides apparently

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

felt that the reason the contour method improved students' draw-

ing was that it caused students to use both senses of sight and

touch. Nicolaides recommended that students imagine that they

were touching the form as they drew. I suggest an alternate possi-

bility: L-mode rejects the meticulous, complex perceptions of

spatial, relational information, thus allowing access to R-mode

processing. In short, Pure Contour Drawing doesn't suit the left

brain's style. It suits the style of the right brain—again, just what

we want.

Using Pure Contour Drawing to bypass your symbol

system

In my classes, I demonstrate Pure Contour Drawing, describing

how to use the method as I draw—if I can manage to keep talking

(an L-mode function) while I'm drawing. Usually, I start out all

right but begin trailing off in mid-sentence after a minute or so.

By that time, however, my students have the idea.

Following the demonstration, I show examples of previous

students' Pure Contour Drawings. See examples of students'

drawings on page 95.

What you'll need:

• Several pieces of drawing paper. You will draw on the top

sheet and use two or three additional sheets to pad the draw-

ing.

• Your #2 writing pencil, sharpened

• Masking tape to tape your drawing paper to your drawing

board

• An alarm clock or kitchen timer

• About thirty minutes of uninterrupted time

What you'll do:

Please read through the following instructions before you begin

your drawing.

1. Look at the palm of your hand—the left hand if you are

Woman in a Hat, Kimon Nicolaides.

Collection of the author.

"Merely to see, therefore, is not

enough. It is necessary to have a

fresh, vivid, physical contact with

the object you draw through as

many of the senses as possible—

and especially through the sense

of touch."

— Kimon Nicolaides

The Natural Way to Draw,

1941

GETTING AROUND YOUR SYMBOL SYSTEM: MEETING EDGES AND CONTOURS

Fig. 6-1.

right-handed and the right if you are left-handed. Bring your

fingers and thumb together to create a mass of wrinkles in

your palm. Those wrinkles are what you are going to draw—

all of them. I can almost hear you saying, "Are you joking?" or

"Forget that!"

2. Sit in a comfortable position with your drawing hand on the

drawing paper, holding the pencil and ready to draw. Then,

put the pencil down and tape the paper in that prearranged

position so it won't shift around while you are drawing.

3. Set the timer for 5 minutes. In this way, you won't have to

keep track of time, an L-mode function.

4. Then, face all the way around in the opposite direction, keep-

ing your hand with the pencil on the drawing paper, and gaze

at the palm of the other hand. Be sure to rest that hand on

some support—the back of a chair or perhaps on your knee—

because you will be holding this rather awkward position for

the allotted 5 minutes. Remember, once you start to draw, you

will not turn to look at the drawing until the timer goes off.

See figure 6-1.

5. Gaze at a single wrinkle in your palm. Place your pencil on

the paper and begin to draw just that edge. As your eyes track

the direction of the edge very slowly, one millimeter at a

time, your pencil will record your perceptions. If the edge

changes direction, so does your pencil. If the edge intersects

with another edge, follow that new information slowly with

your eyes, while your pencil simultaneously records every

detail. An important point: Your pencil can record only what

you see—nothing more, nothing less—at the moment of see-

ing. Your hand and pencil function like a seismograph,

responding only to your actual perceptions.

The temptation to turn and look at the drawing will be very

strong. Resist the impulse! Don't do it! Keep your eyes focussed

on your hand.

Match the movement of the pencil exactly with your eye

movement. One or the other may begin to speed up, but don't let

that happen. You must record everything at the very instant that

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

you see each point on the contour. Do not pause in the drawing,

but continue at a slow, even pace. At first you may feel uneasy or

uncomfortable: Some students even report sudden headaches or a

sense of panic.

6. Do not turn around to see what the drawing looks like until

your timer signals the end of 5 minutes.

7. Most important, you must continue to draw until the timer

signals you to stop.

8. If you experience painful objections from your verbal mode

("What am I doing this for? This is really stupid! It won't even

be a good drawing because I can't see what I'm doing," and so

forth), try your best to keep on drawing. The protests from

the left will fade out and your mind will become quiet. You

will find yourself becoming fascinated with the wondrous

complexity of what you are seeing, and you will feel that you

could go deeper and deeper into the complexity. Allow this to

happen. You have nothing to fear or be uneasy about. Your

drawing will be a beautiful record of your deep perception.

We are not concerned about whether the drawing looks like a

hand. We want the record of your perceptions.

9. Soon, this mental chatter will cease, and you will find yourself

becoming intensely interested in the complexity of the edges

you see in your palm and intensely aware of the beauty of

that complex perception. When that change takes place, you

will have shifted to the visual mode and again you will be

"really drawing."

10. When the timer signals the allotted time, turn and look at

your drawing.

After you have finished:

Think back now on how you felt at the beginning of the Pure

Contour Drawing compared to how you felt later, when you were

deeply into the drawing. What did that later state feel like? Did

you lose awareness of time passing? Like Max Ernst, did you

become enamored of what you saw? When you return to the

alternative state you were in, will you recognize it?

"Blind swimmer, I have made

myself see. I have seen. And I was

surprised and enamored of what

I saw, wishing to identify myself

with it...."

— Max Ernst, 1948

GETTING AROUND YOUR SYMBOL SYSTEM: MEETING EDGES AND CONTOURS