You will see and remember things so much more if you sketch them, rather than just take selfies or quick photos with your phone! Click here to read how one of the greatest museums in the world, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, encourages its patrons to sketch! Bring Your Sketchpad & Pencil To The Museum!
Most museums allow this, but take your sketchbook everywhere with you. You never know when you might see something beautiful, unusual, or memorable!
Beautiful handwriting has almost disappeared from America due to many factors, including the overwhelming growth of digital tools that makes legible handwriting almost unnecessary. And American schools have nearly eradicated training in cursive handwriting. But, as this article points out, something important is being lost. What's Lost As Handwriting Fades?
~ Betty
Thank you for your email telling me of your interest in teaching your 7-year-old to draw. Unless your child is precocious in drawing, age 7 is a bit too young for the lessons contained in my book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
The sign of readiness in young children for more formal lessons is an interest in depicting 3-dimensional space: e.g., 3-dimensional figures, paths going back in space, size change of close and far objects, first attempts at foreshortening, etc. These signs of readiness usually show up in children’s drawings at around ages 8 or 9.
In the meantime, you can help prepare your child for learning to draw by drawing his/her attention to negative spaces, the shapes of shadows, apparent size changes of near and far objects, etc., and by viewing and talking about artworks in books. Better yet, visit museums and point out how an artist uses negative spaces, shadows and lights, size relationships, etc. Still more effective is drawing together with your child: an image of a favorite toy, for example.
I hope this is helpful. Your child is lucky to have a parent so interested in developing perceptual skills!
Betty Edwards
Being left-handed has come a long way. These days it's even considered the sign of a creative mind. Yet so many questions about left-handedness remain unanswered, from its causes to the meaning of its relationship with autism and Tourette's syndrome. … click here to read further: What We Do (And Don't) Know About Left-Handedness
This article from about a decade ago (Winter 2007) was published in American Artist magazine. It's worth another look!
“The universal reaction to Atlas, the newly upgraded next-generation humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics (a company owned by Alphabet), was lots of empathy. Unmindful of being punched, pushed and teased, it focused on finishing tasks in ademo video. People who watched the video responded with comments like ‘stop bullying’ and ‘say no to bullying.’ It was clearly evident that we are on the verge of creating machines that can look and act like us in a physical sense, as well as take over repetitious manual labor — to the delight of monotony-hating, fun-loving humans. However, providing these machines with the human traits of emotion and empathy is a missing piece of the puzzle that continues to baffle AI researchers.”
Read more in this interesting article: In Pursuit of Empathetic Machines
It's all about negative space and continuous curves! Using drawn marks to learn to see.
This 11 minute video is a wonderful illustration of negative space, created by Peter Fraterdeus. You might be interested in his Website: http://www.fraterdeus.com/zen
Peter has taught seminars on calligraphy, type, and printing, in Berlin, Venice, Barcelona, Chicago, Two Rivers, and elsewhere. He is a calligrapher, typographer, photographer, fine-printer, and life-long student of consciousness and symbolic communication forms.
You might find this article interesting: 9 Things That Happen When You Carry A Sketchbook With You Nonstop!
However, I offer one piece of advice: I’d suggest that you carry a smaller sketchbook than the one shown in the photo, say 4” x 6” in size. Pocket Sketching Notebooks
It will easily fit into a pocket or purse and will attract less notice from onlookers, who often ask to see what you are drawing. That is, unless you want to make some new friends! There is nothing that beats someone drawing to attract an audience.
~ Betty Edwards, 2/24/2016
According to a ground-breaking book by Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist who now resides on the Isle of Skye, it might be that the whole of Western culture has neglected half of our brains. McGilchrist argues that the distinctions between the two halves of our brain, though often misunderstood, offer profound insights into why the world is the way it is. In his book The Master and his Emissary, he surveys the medical and psychiatric evidence to present a persuasive case that the fact that our brains have two hemispheres not only shapes how we perceive the world, but is actually a defining factor in our culture.
I want to share this wonderful video with you!
The first major public recognition of the "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain"
Read MoreClarence Coles Phillips (1880 – 1927) was an American artist and illustrator who signed his early works C. Coles Phillips, but after 1911 worked under the abbreviated name, Coles Phillips. He is known for his stylish images of women and signature use of negative space in the paintings he created for advertisements and the covers of popular magazines. Here is an article about him: Coles Phillips, Illustrator
Some of his works are fascinating explorations of negative space—#2 of the five component skills of drawing taught in the DRSB 5-Day Workshops. Here are just a few of Phillips’s works:
Through the ages, artists have sketched hands--their own and others'--trying to get them right! Here are just a few to admire: (1) and (2), John Singer Sargent; (3) and (4) Vincent van Gogh; and (5) Antoine Watteau. The exercise of drawing one's own hands is an important element of the DRSB 5-Day Workshop.
Yesterday, I received the email below from Dongyi, a high school senior in China, who had found our new website and sent a message through the Contacts page. I was so impressed with her eloquence, her grasp of the DRSB ideas, and how the five perceptual skills are helping her with the rest of her studies. She gave me permission to share her message with you.
I have long been convinced that learning to draw and understanding those skills are highly transferable to many fields of study and should be part of every school curriculum. My hope is that one day, drawing will again be taught in schools, to help students access both sides of their brains!
Date: January 23, 2016
Subject: Heartfelt gratitude for Betty and the five perceptual skills which inspire me a lot !
Message:
Dear Betty Edwards,
How's it going?
I am a 17-year-old schoolgirl from China. About one year ago, I bought Drawing On the Right Side of Brain on my kindle. The idea of applying the five perceptual with a certain order to observe and obtain the 'aha' of things really impresses me. As you wrote in the last chapter of the edition published in 2012, the potential of the five skills is beyond the boundary of art and they can help with creative thinking as well, with which I totally agree.
As a senior school student, I applied the five skills to study and found that they are quite useful in organizing information. I have slightly adapted them to make them a better tool that I can use, and I kind of combined them with another theory--the constructal theory (like the five skills, the constructal theory is also general and can be applied to many, many things) by Adrian Bejan.
Sorry that I can't add photos here, and I find it impossible to express mysef clearly without sketches. But if you are interested in my exploration, it will be my honor to send another email with photos of my sketches directly to your email address.
Thanks again for your ground-breaking theory and please pardon me for any possible language mistakes in this message.
Best regards!
Yours sincerely,
Dongyi
This article was published in The New York Times eight years ago, but it is still relevant. My son, Brian Bomeisler, was interviewed in a wide-ranging discussion about how training right-brain skills can help corporations as well as individuals. Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, Drive, and To Sell is Human, who took a DRSB 5-Day Workshop from Brian, is also quoted in this article. Worth a read!
