Re: ::scr Re: doesn't have the morlocks

[Dan Argent <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Perhaps this is were the schism occurs. At some point you starting
> organising things in a certain way in your brain for whatever 
> reason and
> this is what dictates what you'll be good (or best) at. If you're an
> electronic engineer you'll have organised everything in a certain way
> that facilitates those mental leaps that let you 'intuitively'
> understand, say, why you do everything in complex numbers. Or that the
> sum of currents at a junction is zero (I think, I may have 
> that wrong).
> 

ps... I also cite, and heartily reccomend a book called "Drawing on the
right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards.

It's a book that, through the use of scientific concepts (right / left brain
activity) which makes perfect sense to a technical person like me, teaches
you to draw. It doesn't fully explain how an artist's brain works, but
through some simple exercises, teaches you to draw.

The main concept is that, as a technical guy, if I try to draw something, I
don't draw what is there in front of me: I pick up the pencil and my left
brain says "that's an eye you're trying to draw. So, my left-brain model of
an eye is a circle with another coloured circle inside, and another dark
circle inside." when in fact the eye in queston is so much more complex than
that.

To give you an example, one of the first exercises is copying a picture. You
copy the picture right way up, and then upside-down.
Looking at the two pictures, you can tell the upside-down one is much much
better, and the explanation for this being that your
left-brain didn't recognise the eye as an eye, or the arm or leg, and
instead didn't but in and just let you draw what you were seeing.

The whole book is about these exercises to make the left brain "switch off"
for a bit, and get that artistic, unaware of time or words kind of feeling. 


I think this book is great beacause:

1) It tells you why you can't draw
2) It then teaches you how to overcome that.
3) It makes sense in a scientific way.


This makes a welcome change to school art lessons, where everyone just sat
and drew. 

However bad you are at art, do the course in the book (really do it), and
you'll be amazed at the result.