Right hemispheric drawing: methodology, techniques and exercises

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

A small child picks up a brush and enthusiastically runs it over the sheet, smears the paint with his finger and is rightfully proud of his masterpiece. It doesn’t matter to him whether he does it right or not, the main thing is the pleasure of the process. Growing up, a person is more and more acquiring conventions and certain stereotypes. Children's enthusiasm disappears, and in its place is the fear of doing wrong. Right hemisphere drawing helps to overcome the clamp and return the childish attitude to artistic creativity. This technique appeared in the middle of the 20th century, and since then it continues to systematically conquer the world. Each generation brings something new, giving it development in accordance with the changed realities.

What's wrong with the left?

Scientists have long proven that the right and left hemispheres are responsible for different abilities and thoughts of a person. The left is formal perception, logic, symbols and reason. The right one is our intuition, emotions, feelings, inspiration. Modern life is arranged in such a way that people trust the left hemisphere more. Constantly learning to listen to the mind, not the feelings.

Classic drawing training is designed for a long time. Learning goes from simple to complex. You will have to draw a variety of cubes and balls with a pencil for a long and tedious time, learn to build perspective. It will take a lot of time to listen to lectures about color, its combination, about the direction of light and shadow. Gradually, the student moves on to more complex forms, and only after a few months the teacher allows you to paint more complex landscapes and still lifes.

Before starting work on a complex picture, you must first carefully decompose everything into foreground, background and central plans. Make a few sketches, work on sketches, and only after that the masterpiece is born. The right hemisphere returns drawing to the realm of creativity from the realm of analytical thinking. The lack of analysis helps to calm down and eliminate the psychological burden from painting, to remove the limiters. Creativity is accompanied by relaxation and enjoyment of the process itself, and not the result.

Other principles

Classical drawing involves a long learning technique and numerous techniques. What is the difference between right hemispheric drawing? His technique is based on the discovery of unconscious creativity and blocking fears.

When a small child draws for the first time, he first simply smears the sheet and only then determines what it looks like. Over time, under the influence of training, certain symbols begin to be reproduced. The head is a circle, the leg or arm is a stick, the eyes are dots, and so on. When an adult picks up a pencil, about to reproduce a portrait, the left hemisphere of the brain slipssymbols from childhood. As a result, children's scribbles come out instead of a masterpiece on paper.

The main task is to get rid of these symbols, for which you need to push logic into the background and bring forward intuition and inspiration. Learn to transfer onto paper your vision of the subject, and not the symbol that denotes it. By and large, you just need to learn to see the object as an object, and not its image processed by the brain.

Right hemispheric drawing is a bit easier and more natural than academic drawing. No need to make complex sketches and sketches, just pick up a brush and start creating. To make the picture come out natural, it is enough to know a few simple tricks. You can develop right-brain drawing at home on your own.

Where is this taught

Now this is a very popular topic. Training in right hemisphere drawing is carried out mainly in special centers for creative development, among other master classes. What the organizers of the event promise:

• Learn how to draw in just one day.
• Good mood and emotional lift.
• Believe in yourself, the field of training you will never say that you can't draw again.
• You can decorate your apartment with your own paintings, you don't have to puzzle over what to give friends and family for the holiday.
• The tricks are very simple, and everyone will easily transfer their skill to others. After learning, you will be able to copy the paintings of your favorite artists.

The class lasts several hours with a short break for a cup of tea. Initially, severalsimple exercises to activate the mood for right-brain drawing. Gouache, paper, brushes and an apron, so as not to get dirty, are given to each participant. Their price is included in the price of the course in advance.

Any person can be trained - from a child to a pensioner. People with different skill levels work together in the same program. For some, this is the first step to drawing. Those who already know how to draw come, but want to learn something new and discover the unknown facets of creativity.

Testimonials from participants

Many are skeptical about going for right brain painting. This is a zombie, they believe, suspecting that it is impossible to learn how to draw in just one day. But the wariness quickly disappears when their brush brings out the first masterpiece. More positive emotions arise with increasing confidence in your abilities.

Those who have mastered right hemispheric drawing leave good reviews. Even those who come to class with a fair amount of skepticism go home happy and satisfied with themselves. Only a few feel they have wasted their money. There is a small percentage of people who have formalized their thoughts so much that they can no longer switch to creative tracks and open themselves to something new.

Judging by the reviews, right-brain drawing helps not only to develop creatively. With constant drawing according to this technique, all life changes for the better. It becomes easier to find a solution, because there are paints at hand. The rested mind itself gives answers to the seeminglydifficult questions before.

Self-learning possible

There is an experienced teacher at the training, a special atmosphere is created for fruitful creativity, and no one will definitely distract. But not everyone has the opportunity to pay for these classes, and not all cities have special schools. What about those who are still passionate about learning?

You can learn the method of right-brain drawing on your own. Its founder is Betty Edwards. She taught mainly graphic drawing. Her students at the beginning of the course drew their own portrait, and at the end they repeated the same thing. The result is amazing.

The Russian school has slightly changed right-brain drawing. The exercises here are mainly done in gouache. In the process of learning, you can learn to make paintings that are not much different from the works of great artists. Particular emphasis is placed on landscapes.

It will be a little more difficult to study the material on your own. But for a person who is serious about changing his life, nothing is impossible.

How to determine the work of the hemisphere

How to determine when the necessary function is turned on in the brain, and right hemisphere drawing begins? Exercises to create a conflict of reason and intuition will help with this. You will need a classic optical illusion. What is drawn - a vase or two profiles? Everyone pays attention to different elements, but that's not the point.

To do the exercise, you need to cut this picture in half. Right-handers take the left side, left-handers take the right side. We put a picture with a half of a vase on a blank sheet of paper. Let's start the exercise:

1. Draw a pencil over the finished profile, while mentally or aloud pronouncing the names of the parts of the face: forehead, nose, lips, chin.
2. Now you need to finish the picture right after speaking.
3. At the moment of drawing, the mind will begin to dictate previously spoken words. This is where the conflict of consciousness with the subconscious arises - it is almost impossible to draw profiles symmetrically, pronouncing the words.

It should be considered how this problem was nevertheless solved. If, ignoring symmetry, the subject simply drew a profile, then logic prevailed. When it is possible to abstract from words and draw lines, right-brain drawing turns on.

Upside down

There is a very interesting way to improve the perception for the right brain painting technique. You need to choose any drawing where there are only outlines and nothing else, as in a children's coloring book. Then flip the image and redraw it upside down.

The left side of the brain does not perceive the inverted picture well, so it will be very difficult to draw. You just need to copy the lines as they are. Pay attention to the position of the strokes relative to the sheet and other parts of the drawing.

No need to first transfer the general outline of the picture, and then draw small details. The slightest mistake in this case will lead to a violation of the entire composition. You can cover part of the imagehand or another sheet of paper to perceive only the part that is being drawn now.

If suddenly the realization came that each line is just a part of a single picture, and drawing turned into picking up a puzzle of them, then the right hemisphere worked. But this fragile state is very easy to break.

Outline drawing

This is another task for right brain painting. It can be easily done at home. To do this, you need a pencil, a piece of paper and tape. We attach the paper to the table with adhesive tape and turn sideways so that the working hand remains on the table. We put the fingers of the other hand together so that many small folds and wrinkles form, and put them on our knees. You should be comfortable. You have to sit like this without moving. Spotting 5 minutes.

After the countdown has begun, it is no longer possible to look at the sheet. The eyes should very slowly follow the lines of the folds on the arm. Speed - about 1 mm per second, not faster. The other hand, in which the pencil, repeats the movement of the eyes on a piece of paper. Continue to paint continuously in this manner until the timer goes off. There is no need to worry about the result, in this task, achieving image accuracy is not the main thing.

During the exercise, a problem may arise - either the eyes will move too quickly, or the hand will run ahead. The main goal is to achieve synchronization of vision and pencil movement.

The task is designed to maximize visual perception. You can continue the lesson with the lumppaper, drapery on a chair and other objects, with many multidirectional lines. After a few iterations, the world starts to look very different.

Viewfinder

For a new exercise, you will have to make an auxiliary tool - a viewfinder. It consists of a cardboard frame and transparent plastic or glass inserted into it. After the frame is ready, you can start the task.

Aim the viewfinder at the selected object, it could again be a hand. We fix it so that it does not move, and take a comfortable position. During the exercise, only the working hand should move, and nothing else. We close one eye so that the picture does not blur. With a permanent marker, we circle all the lines and contours of the object in the viewfinder directly on the glass. This is another way to learn to see the subject and draw it, not the symbol.

The next step is to transfer the image from glass to paper. You need to do this strictly along the lines, as in the exercise for drawing upside down. The process should gradually turn into a redrawing of the reality around you. With a modern way of thinking, it is very difficult to get rid of stereotypes and start seeing the world as it really is. With this skill, the paintings will appear by themselves.

Little artists

Right brain painting is a natural activity for children. A small child is initially more intuitive and creative, until we began to drown it out with our training andupbringing. Children do not need to deliberately fantasize, for them the dream becomes an integral part of reality.

The first drawings are unique in their own way. It doesn’t matter what happened and what didn’t, what matters is the creative process itself and the pleasure that a brush or pencil leaves a mark on paper. A simple doodle can turn out to be a winter night, wind, and in 5 minutes it will turn into a portrait of my mother.

For adults, the task of drawing emotions is very difficult. Most often they turn into symbols: love is a heart, hope is a dove. The peculiarity of children's drawing is that symbolism is not characteristic of kids until adults tell about it. A bright spot of color can turn out to be a portrait, until the child is told that the head is round and the eyes can be drawn with dots.

The main task of parents is not to spoil the child's original creative perception of the world. You never need to tell a young artist that he is drawing wrong, it can completely change his picture of the world. No need to impose your symbols and your vision. The kid often transfers to paper not the image of the object itself, but its perception or feelings associated with it. No child has ever drawn the sun as a yellow circle with a smile and eyes on their own until they showed it.

For those who still believe that right-brain drawing is a zombie, the path to a new vision of the world is not available. You won't be able to become a real artist in one day. But pictures painted with this kind of thinking deserveplace of honor on the wall in the living room. Creativity affects our whole life and allows us to become a harmonious personality. In addition, drawing is great for relieving stress and nervous tension, and even helps to cope with depression.