Penny and others please??

[Airbrushkarin]

I ran across this and got to thinking. I am trying to learn to draw adn everyone keeps sayign draw what you seeno waht is there or vise or versa??? sorry me dyslixey messing with this stuff and me sometimes. I was wondering if this is what you all are talking about??

[slaterza]

This was a lot of fun for my family. My 5 year old who is just learning to read had the easiest time of it. My 8 year old son who is just mastering reading had the hardest time of it. We had fun thanks for posting.

Sam

[HF AIRBRUSH]

having no problems with it... :D

henk

[ProfessorGreibowitz]

Left brain, right brain....


I have a problem with people who espouse that theory. They have some desire to set up a false dichotomy where you are arguing with.. you!!


Even if the dual-cerebellum-split-hemisphere-logical-versus- um... it doesn't matter what part of your brain does what. What matters is understanding the goal. "Draw what you see not what you know" means to copy what is actually there in terms of shapes and values. If you want to draw someone's nose, don't try to draw a nose like you did as a child but just copy, like a machine, what their nose really looks like. Sometimes you say "A nose COULDN'T be shaped that way." but it can.

The pic you posted is easy if you keep your mind on your goal. Look at only the color of each word then say the color. So you simply don't read the words at that point.


Drawing what you see is great until you try to draw a fire-breathing dragon. :eek: hehe


Tim

[Airbrushkarin]

Drawing what you see is great until you try to draw a fire-breathing dragon. :eek: hehe


Tim

LMAO!! Now that is just too funny. although waht are you trying to say here the dragon that lives in backyard and gets fed by the hobet in my basement is not a good refrence point for me too use???? LOL :wink2:

Sorry had to run with it firtst good luagh in a long time......

[Penny220]

This is exactly what the book "drawing on the right side of the brain" is talking about when it discusses confusing the left side of the brain. Once you confuse your left side the right side kicks in and makes it easier to draw.

Tim is correct to a point. No it doesn't matter what side of the brain you use BUT most of us use each hemisphere for different things. For most of us, the left hemisphere likes to translate information and make sence of things the right brain is more literal and more visually orientated. This is why Sam's 5 year old had an easier time with this exercise. The five year old brain is still mapping out which side is to do what and they will think more literally anyway. There are many different games that prove this.

[Airbrushkarin]

Penny I thought that this was a simple visual to help get the concept now I am planning on some drawing here at my desk today I hope.

[ProfessorGreibowitz]

I agree that those with more verbal skill and mathematical abilities, etc. often have a harder time with things that are more visualy intuitive that can't be labeled easily with words but my only gripe is with the stressing of left brain/right brain. I personally think a lot while painting (is it too dark? is that shape right? etc.) and so I don't think it wise to disenfranchise (heheh) the "left brain" as a villain when painting, drawing, etc. Why can't they both just get along??? hehehheheeh

airbrushkarin, one excercise from Edwards book (not that she came up with it) is called a contour drawing. You look at a thing and w/o looking at your paper, you follow the edges of the thing while imagining your pencil tip following the edges or contours. Don't worry if it stinks when done. Try to force yourself to do it on a few easy objects and go veeeeery slowly and enjoy each curve as if it was your last. If you have to pick up the pencil, do it but don't ever look at the paper for guidance. Now, once you do a few, you can go on to a modified contour drawing where you get to "peek" at your paper to be sure your proportions are okay and it stays on track size wise, etc.


You can do it!

(here I am, Mr. I can't draw even if it was straws and I'm advising you on it! heheeh)

Do as i say, not as i do. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Tim

[HF AIRBRUSH]

as far as i know man have 3 sides of there brain...the left...the right...and the bottom..
my wife tells me often that i don't think with my head but i think with my ..... :D :D :D

ok...serious now...hahaha...
the most problems i have with drawing is that if i close my eyes i can see what i want...in detail...but i just can't get it on paper...
as long as i have a picture i can draw it...just a photo or a picture on the internet...but drawing from my mind just won't work yet.....

henk

[ProfessorGreibowitz]

Me two! Oh, hehehhe me too!


I can copy pretty well but translating from my mind is hard. My problem also is I just don't see images in my mind clearly so right now I am just in copy mode. I see a great painting or drawing and say "I never would have thought of that." How do they know what to include? Well, progress. Forward progress is all I ask. hehehhee



Tim

[mannyclubs]

Sorry I am no help here at all...I have no brain. and thats all i have to say about that. :confused:
Manny

[Airbrushkarin]

Manny I hear you I feel that way more then not. But hey I figure the pencil really and truely goes in my hand so that is the most important part for right now hehehehe.......

[mannyclubs]

lol Want some good practice drawing Karin.. try drawing some tatoos or designing your own I do them quite a bit. Even the simple ones are fun to do. But anyway drawing will certanly help you to air brush in my opinion anyway, but what do I know hehe. Just have fun and practice!!!!!! :) We will have to hook up sometime to draw and air brush some time like on a Sat. morning or somthing. Talk to you later..
Manny

[Airbrushkarin]

Tatoo Flash is almost my favorite art!!!!!!

[PAKI]

I know I could cope with this better if it were upside down.

[Airbrushkarin]

Here you go Paki I am a great fan of Betty Edwards book Drawing from the Right Side of the Brian.

[Quiet]

I agree that those with more verbal skill and mathematical abilities, etc. often have a harder time with things that are more visualy intuitive that can't be labeled easily with words but my only gripe is with the stressing of left brain/right brain. I personally think a lot while painting (is it too dark? is that shape right? etc.) and so I don't think it wise to disenfranchise (heheh) the "left brain" as a villain when painting, drawing, etc. Why can't they both just get along??? hehehheheeh

Ugh. The popular theory of dividing people into “artistic” versus “logical/mathematical/verbally adept/whatever” strikes me as not only absurd but potentially harmful to artists. Is an artist with strong verbal or business skills somehow diminished as an artist for possessing such non-artist-type skills? Such assumptions can (and do) seep into the unconscious thoughts of artists and works to deter them from excelling in math/English/what-have-you, or works to deter those who are good at the academic side of things from delving deeper into art. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My father told me about a CalTech lecture he’d been to long ago. The theme was intuition, and the point of the lecture was that intuition is the brain’s signal that it has observed some pattern that our conscious mind has yet to pick up on. Intuition *is* logic, as carried out by the meat-calculators we are each equipped with. For a mathematician, intuition is that glimpse into something which must then be reproduced with equations in order to be communicated and proven to those who haven’t experienced that same flash of intuition. For an artist, intuition is the thing which tells us what shade of blue to paint with. The only difference is that as artists, we don’t have to scientifically prove that the shade of blue is correct. We paint with it, we find others who understand it at that same intuitive level, and (hopefully) we make a buck selling them that shade of blue.

[Penny220]

It's not about what skills we possess or don't possess. It's about the modalities of our brain. Scientists have proven that most people after a certain age use one side of their brain for some things and the other side for others. There are exceptions for every rule and of course exceptions to this as well as seen by people who have had labotimies. On the other hand those that have undergone labotimies have also undergone extreme personality changes. Nobody is saying that an artist has to be right brained and a business person has to be left brained. It has simply been proven that for most of us the artist/visual part of us comes from the right brain and the logical part of us comes from the left. Everyone has the ability for both it's a matter of being able to tap into particular parts of us at will that gives some people problems. Others do it instinctively. Since the majority of what we do is left brained operations and the majority of people are left brained (right handed) it is more likely that they will have a harder time accessing their right brain. This is why are right brain tends to take over while we sleep because it too needs the excercise hense the crazy mixed up dreams we have.

[PAKI]

Here you go Paki I am a great fan of Betty Edwards book Drawing from the Right Side of the Brian.
Now things are coming together! That did the trick. I can deal with it and you have successfully fooled my brain. Cudos to you and Betty. :clap: :wave: :wink2:

[Keith Russell]

Ugh. The popular theory of dividing people into “artistic” versus “logical/mathematical/verbally adept/whatever” strikes me as not only absurd but potentially harmful to artists.

It can only hurt those (artists or otherwise) who buy into it.

Is an artist with strong verbal or business skills somehow diminished as an artist for possessing such non-artist-type skills?

Well, if we judge artists by the only logical criteria available (the work itself), very few of us would agree as to 'the best' artists--or 'the worst' (which is the same result when artists are judged by some other criteria!)

Such assumptions can (and do) seep into the unconscious thoughts of artists and works to deter them from excelling in math/English/what-have-you, or works to deter those who are good at the academic side of things from delving deeper into art. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Forget the unconscious; I know more than a few artists who are consciously--and adamantly--devoted to the view that art (and artists) must be anti-logic.

My father told me about a CalTech lecture he’d been to long ago. The theme was intuition, and the point of the lecture was that intuition is the brain’s signal that it has observed some pattern that our conscious mind has yet to pick up on. Intuition *is* logic, as carried out by the meat-calculators we are each equipped with.

Intuition is logic only when the intution turns out to be right! I've had plenty of flashes of intuition that, when examined carefully, turned out to be nonsense. (And, even when intution is right, that calm examination is required in order to verify that the intution was, in fact, correct.)

For a mathematician, intuition is that glimpse into something which must then be reproduced with equations in order to be communicated and proven to those who haven’t experienced that same flash of intuition.

More often than not, scientists then work out the equations, in order to know themselves, whether their intitions were correct.

For an artist, intuition is the thing which tells us what shade of blue to paint with. The only difference is that as artists, we don’t have to scientifically prove that the shade of blue is correct. We paint with it, we find others who understand it at that same intuitive level, and (hopefully) we make a buck selling them that shade of blue.

Intuition guides my concepts, but my works turn out (much) better when careful reason--not intution--guides my execution, composition--

--and my colour choices!

K

[ProfessorGreibowitz]

Good posts but i must side with Keith and Quite here. I use this analogy.

You can write a great song and record it poorly and it's still going to be listened to. You can write crap and record it on a million dollar budget in the finest studio and it will still be.. well, not worth listening to.


Ideas must come before execution and still both are best effected by a rational examination. But people want to cling to the notion that doing so is somehow too cold and machine-like. Too bad. I get inspired but I take that kernel of idea and mold it using my intellect so that the idea and execution is the best. Still, a good idea beats good execution any day of the week, IMO.


Interesting discussion.

Tim

[Marissa]

Karin,

In my oppinion, don't be bothered by theoretical wizardry too much - just draw and keep on drawing. The "paint what you see not what you know" thingie really means nothing more than "forget what it is that you are drawing and concentrate on the shape, not the item itself.

For example, if you draw that dragon in your backyard :-), forget the fact that it is a dragon but concentrate on how it looks like - break it down into a series of shapes, then copy those shapes.

A good excercise to try this out is to take a photograph of for example a face, turn it upside down, then draw what you see (not what you know). Putting it upside down will alienate the face as a fammiliar object and will make it easier for you to forget that for example you are drawing a nose - it will also make it easier for you to reckognise the exact SHAPE which is what it is all about.

A lot of theories go around and I don't know which side of my brain does what, but I do know that if you learn how to "see" properly (drawing is 90% seeing and 10% drawing), enough excersise will do the rest.

Marissa -

[T.U.C.]

I'm going to have to agree with the Professor on this one. Our culture spends way too much time trying to divide and catagorize everything. It's simply not possible to be good at everything or to do everything - remember the jack -of-all-trades? He's the master of none.

So the brain is divided into different regions just like a village. Each region has a different thing that it's good at, just like each member of the village. Image if you had a village where everyone was a good bricklayer, but there were no carpenters. You'd have a maze of fantastic walls, but you'd get quite wet when it started raining because there would be no roofs. The village only functions properly and effeciently when all the parts work together. You're brain is the same way. Let go of the "my right brain says this and my left brain says that." Make the two sit down and work it out. When the two halves have worked out the problem and come to a concencus decision, chances are that the decision will be the right one. (Now if we could just get our government to do that....... :rolleyes: )

Then it gets even more complicated. Sometime a particular task is best done by just one part of your brain (after all, do you want your butcher performing surgery on you?). The trick is to be comfortable enough in your thinking to allow that part of your brain to handle the problem without meddling from the other parts. (NOT as easy as it sounds.) That is what I think intuition (a.k.a. insticts) really is.

For instance (and this drives my wife nuts), I have an uncanny sense of direction. Once I've actually placed a location on a map, as I'm driving and come to an intersection, within 200-300 yards I usually know if I'm going the wrong direction. My intuition has had me make a few wrong turns, but it always rights itself rather quickly in the form of questioning if I'm going the right way. A quick look at the map usually confirms I'm not, and I turn around. It took my logical brain a long time to learn to shut-up and just do what it was told by my direction sense, but I haven't been really lost since then (at least 14 years). And for my job, I drive to places I've never been before all the time.

Work on trying to get your brain to work together, and to know when to just do what it's told, and all aspects of your life and thinking will work more smoothly.

Devon

p.s. Don't get the wrong impression from this post. I'm not even close to perfect. So far I've only been able to master the direction thing. I got alot of work cut out for me with every other part. But that's what makes life interresting and worth living.

BTW, my brain village wants to say "hi" to you all:

:) :cool: :angel: :evil: :wave: :confused: :cat: :wink2:

[Penny220]

LOL, now I know where the saying came from "I'm lost, I've gone to go look for myself. If I should come back before I return please ask me to wait."