Self-Improvement: Sketches

I've always had a kind of passive interest in art. I took a few art classes WAAAAY back in elementary school and junior high, but I've never really done anything since. Well, I recently decided to throw myself back into drawing, and so I'm gonna share a bit of that journey with you.

Why yes, you ARE exactly that fortunate.

Since it's been so long since I've really done ANY type of drawing (and I've never really been that great an artist), I asked my friend Manelle Oliphant for some suggestions on how to get started. Manelle, by the way, is a FANTASTIC artist - check some of her work out at http://www.manelleoliphant.com/.

Manelle recommended a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards. The book's full of exercises which are meant to teach your dominant left brain to let the right brain take over when attempting to draw, as the right brain has a better sense of shape, curves, and so on. I've been working through the exercises, and, frankly, I'm kind of surprised with what I've come up with. It's not exactly Picasso-level art (well, most of it), but I'm still pleased.

The first exercises are just to overcome the fear of the blank page by drawing random lines - any way you feel - across the page, like so:




Next, the author suggests copying the "face vase" optical illusion. First, you draw a face from memory, identifying as you go the features of the face (brow, nose, lips, etc.). This is a left-brained activity. Then you copy the image on the opposite side of the page WITHOUT naming the features. Instead, you let your right brain focus on the visual aspects of the image - the depth of the curves, the length of the lines, etc.:

After that, you repeat the exercise with a nonhuman face (and I must say I enjoyed this one):

The first big exercise - the one that actually had me kind of intimidated - involved copying a picture while studying it upside-down. The theory is that the left side of the brain can interpret an image when it is oriented correctly. Thus, the left brain will try to draw a hand on its own (usually resulting in a very childish drawing) instead of copying the original image. By flipping the image around, though, the left brain is forced out of the picture, and the visual right brain can take over.

Here is the original image I tried to copy (as recommended in the Edwards book) - Pablo Picasso's portrait of Igor Stravinsky:

And here's my take on it:

Finally, since I'm a big comic book fan, I decided to try the upside-down technique one more time:

That's Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, a samurai rabbit who represents everything RIGHT with comic books (I mean, he has his own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure!).

I'll admit that these sketches aren't perfect - Usagi's head is a bit too flat, and Stravinsky's hands look awful. Still, though, it's a lot better than I thought I was capable of. We'll see what else I can come up with.