Art and BRAINS!

Art has been a big part of my life since I was very young. I loved Paul Klee as a child because he drew a big lovely cat with a little tiny bird that I could copy. I loved the Disney cartoons and going to Disney World to see the art being created before my eyes.

Lately I have been practicing my art quite a bit because I will be doing storyboards. This style of drawing is unfamiliar to me. It is like the art in comic books. Much of my art is more freestyle and I have been self-taught for the most part.

From practicing this new style I realized that I am not excellent at perspective, and have been taking classes with Bob Budiansky of Transformer fame, and another comic artist named Daniel Rosa to help me with my weaknesses.

To say the least, these guys are amazing.


Daniel recommended a book to me called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I had my doubts about this book because it seemed like many other art books I had seen...here do these lessons and copy this picture and you will get better at drawing. But this one is different. The lessons, at least in the beginning, are focused on helping the artist to wake up and use the right hemisphere of the brain.

The left side of our brain, once considered the dominant and more important side, is the verbal, analytical, logical and linear side...and can get in the way of the intuitive, holistic and nonverbal right side when drawing.


The book tells us there are ways to shift from left brain thinking to right brain. The first way told us to draw a picture upside-down. To be exact, to look at a picture that is upside-down, and to recreate it starting at the top of the page, which would actually be the bottom of the image. Here is the picture from the book; a drawing by Picasso of Igor Stravinsky:

Here is my drawing turned right-side up:

Another method to induce the shift is to draw with your left hand. I am slightly ambidextrous so I had a bit of an advantage with this one:

The final shift-inducer was to draw a picture of your hand without ever looking at the paper. The urge to peek is almost overwhelming at times...your left brain is trying to straighten things out. Here is my hand drawn on a taped down piece of paper...and I did NOT peek.

These lessons are taught to help us improve our art and to draw with more ease and freedom. Then just when you can feel that shift happening on its own when you draw, you need to in corporate that linear left side back in for perspective.

Looks like I need all the help I can get.

If you do any of the lessons please feel free to post them or send them to me, I'd love to see them!