The Drawing Exercise that Changed My Life

In this video , I'm gonna share with you a drawing exercise that changed my life and maybe it'll do the same for you as well .

Hello there , everyone .

Matt here with the virtual instructor dot com .

And in this video , I'm gonna share with you a drawing exercise that absolutely changed my life .

That's one of the reasons why I'm sitting here talking to you today .

But before we get into that , I'd like to remind you if you haven't done so yet .

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Now , let's move on to this drawing exercise .

I remember the first time I was exposed to this drawing exercise , I was about 12 years old and it had such an impact on me because it was the first time I realized that drawing is actually a skill and uh we can learn how to draw no matter what our background is .

Now , this drawing exercise comes from the fantastic book drawing on the right side of the brain by Betty Edwards .

And if you're interested in being a representational artist , you absolutely need to take a look at this book because it's just fantastic for understanding and how drawing works according to our brains .

Now , the premise of this book is based on the hemispheres of our brain .

We obviously have a left hemisphere in a right hemisphere .

These are commonly referred to as the left side and the right side of the brain obviously .

Now the left side of our brain is responsible for more analytical aspects of things that we have to process like mathematics .

While the right side of our brain is more responsible for creative type processes like drawing and painting .

Now , we obviously can't create a piece of artwork without using both our left brain and our right brain .

The problem is for some folks , their left brain gets in the way .

Perhaps you've had someone say , just draw what you see and they tell you to you in a way that seems very easy .

But whenever you try to draw what you see , it doesn't ever turn out the way that it actually looks .

For example , let's say you're drawing a shoe and you're looking at a shoe to draw it and everything .

But the shoe that you draw looks like a shoe maybe , but it doesn't look like the actual shoe that you were looking at .

And this is because you have your left brain shouting at you the whole time saying draw a shoe , draw a shoe .

So as a result from memory , your analytical side of your brain puts together bits of information and draws a shoe .

It's just not the way that we see a shoe in reality .

However , if we can isolate our right brain which functions more on line shape , form value , color and texture , then we're gonna have a better chance of actually replicating what we see in reality .

Now , if you're sharp , you'll realize that those elements that I just mentioned line shape form , color value , text .

Sure , those are the elements of art .

And as artists , we take those elements of art and arrange them in a drawing or painting to communicate a subject .

Now we can communicate our subjects in a more abstract way .

And the result is abstract art or we can arrange these elements in a way that produces more of a representational drawing .

The trick is if we're trying to create a representational drawing , we need to allow our right brain to dominate a little bit more over the top of our left brain .

And this drawing exercise that I'm about to share with you does just that .

Now , we'll just start here with the photo reference and this gentleman looks like a good reference .

We'll turn this photo reference into a line drawing and you can do this through tracing if you prefer .

Now , I'm gonna use this line drawing to create a drawing on a sheet of paper .

That's exactly the same size .

But instead of drawing it right side up , I'm gonna simply turn our line drawing upside down and then draw from the upside down reference .

What's gonna happen here is it's gonna force my mind to not think about what I'm drawing , but instead focus on the lines and shapes that I actually see .

So you can see it takes my left brain out of the process almost completely .

Now , as you go through this exercise , you'll actually start to feel your mind shift and you'll notice that you are concentrating on the lines and shapes instead of the actual objects that you're drawing now , this shift won't happen immediately , but it will happen , you're almost forced into it .

Of course , making mistakes is acceptable .

As you can see , I'm erasing a little area .

In fact , if you see mistakes , that is actually a good sign , that means you're actually understanding the spatial relationships that are happening between the lines and the shapes that are creating .

This ultimately leads to better representational drawing because this is how we draw representation .

As artists , we have to take out the subject matter and take our left brains out of the process essentially .

And instead allow our right brains to take over and focus on what we're actually seeing .

This is how we create illusions in drawings and paintings .

Now , you can see I'm only using lawns for this drawing and you could do this with values as well if you prefer or colors .

But this process using only lawns is definitely sufficient for starting to train your brain to see things differently , to start making your brain start to see the world as an artist sees the world when they're trying to create a representational drawing .

Now , obviously , we should draw all of our drawings upside down using references that are upside down , that might seem a little bit silly .

But this drawing exercise is one that you should probably revisit every once in a while .

And if you've never done it before , you should definitely do it .

Because again , this drawing exercise is the one that changed my life and helped me understand the way that we see the world as artists .

And also more importantly , that drawing is a skill that anyone can learn .

Now , once your upside down drawing is complete , you can flip your drawing paper over and compare it with your reference .

Now , obviously , all the lines aren't exactly the same , but it's a pretty good representation of the line drawing .

Thanks so much for watching this video .

I hope you enjoyed it .

I hope you were able to pick up a couple of things here and there .

Remember drawing is a skill that anyone can learn and develop .

But for some of us that means that we need to work on training her right brain and the exercise I just shared with you .

Does that .