The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (3 page)

Those five basic skills are the prerequisites for effective use of the two additional “advanced” skills, and the set of seven may constitute the entire basic global skill of drawing. Many books on drawing actually focus mainly on the two advanced skills. Therefore, after you complete the lessons in this book, you will find ample instruction available to continue learning.

I need to emphasize a further point: Global or whole skills, such as reading, driving, and drawing, in time become automatic. As I mentioned above, basic component skills become completely integrated into the smooth flow of the global skill. But in acquiring any new global skill, the initial learning is often a struggle, first with each component skill, then with the smooth integration of components. Each of my students goes through this process, and so will you. As each new skill is learned, you will merge it with those previously learned until, one day, you are simply drawing—just as, one day, you found yourself simply driving without thinking about how to do it. Later, one almost forgets about having learned to read, learned to drive, learned to draw.

In order to attain this smooth integration in drawing, all five component skills must be in place. I’m happy to say that the fifth skill, the perception of the whole, or gestalt, is neither taught nor learned but instead seems to emerge as a result of acquiring the other four skills. But of the first four, none can be omitted, just as learning how to brake or steer cannot be omitted when learning to drive.

In the original book, I believe I explained sufficiently well the first two skills, the perception of edges and the perception of spaces. The importance of sighting (the third skill of perceiving relationships) however, needed greater emphasis and clearer explanation, because students often tend to give up too quickly on this complicated skill. And the fourth skill, the perception of lights and shadows, also needed expanding. Most of the content changes for this new edition, therefore, are in the last chapters.

In this edition, I again reiterate a basic strategy for gaining access at conscious level to R-mode, my term for the visual, perceptual mode of the brain. I continue to believe that this strategy is probably my main contribution to educational aspects of the “right-hemisphere story” that began with Roger Sperry’s celebrated scientific work. The strategy is stated as follows:

In order to gain access to the subdominant visual, perceptual R-mode of the brain, it is necessary to present the brain with a job that the verbal, analytic L-mode will turn down.

For most of us, L-mode thinking seems easy, normal, and familiar (though perhaps not for many children and dyslexic individuals). The perverse R-mode strategy, in contrast, may seem difficult and unfamiliar—even “off-the-wall.” It must be learned in opposition to the “natural” tendency of the brain to favor L-mode because, in general, language dominates. By learning to control this tendency for specific tasks, one gains access to powerful brain functions often obscured by language.

All of the exercises in this book, therefore, are based on two organizing principles and major aims. First, to teach the reader five basic component skills of drawing and, second, to provide conditions that facilitate making cognitive shifts to R-mode, the thinking/seeing mode specialized for drawing.

In short, in the process of learning to draw, one also learns to control (at least to some degree) the mode by which one’s own brain handles information. Perhaps this explains in part why my book appeals to individuals from such diverse fields. Intuitively, they see the link to other activities and the possibility of seeing things differently by learning to access R-mode at conscious level.

Chapter Eleven, “Drawing on the Beauty of Color,” was a new chapter in the 1989 edition, written in response to many requests from my readers. The chapter focuses on using color in drawing—a fine transitional step toward painting. Over the past decade, my teaching staff and I have developed a five-day intensive course on basic color theory, a course that is still a “work in progress.” I am still using the concepts in the chapter on color, so I have not revised it for this edition.

I believe the logical progression for a person starting out in artistic expression should be as follows:

First, a person learns the basic skills of drawing, which provide knowledge of line (learned through contour drawing of edges, spaces, and relationships) and knowledge of value (learned through rendering lights and shadows). Skillful use of color requires first of all the ability to perceive color as value. This ability is difficult, perhaps impossible, to acquire unless one has learned to perceive the relationships of lights and shadows through drawing. I hope that my chapter introducing color in drawing will provide an effective bridge for those who want to progress from drawing to painting.

Finally, I am retaining the brief section on handwriting. In many cultures, writing is regarded as an art form. Americans often deplore their handwriting but are at a loss as to how to improve it. Handwriting, however, is a form of drawing and can be improved. I regret to say that many California schools are still using handwriting-instructional methods that were failing in 1989 and are still failing today. My suggestions in this regard appear in the Afterword.

The underlying theory of this revised edition remains the same: to explain in basic terms the relationship of drawing to visual, perceptual brain processes and to provide methods of accessing and controlling these processes. As a number of scientists have noted, research on the human brain is complicated by the fact that the brain is struggling to understand itself. This three-pound organ is perhaps the only bit of matter in the universe—at least as far as we know—that is observing itself, wondering about itself, trying to analyze itself, and attempting to gain better control of its own capabilities. This paradoxical situation no doubt contributes—at least in part—to the deep mysteries that still remain, despite rapidly expanding scientific knowledge about the brain.

One question scientists are studying intensely is where the two major thinking modes are specifically located in the human brain and how the organization of modes can vary from individual to individual. While the so-called location controversy continues to engage scientists, along with myriad other areas of brain research, the existence in every brain of two fundamentally different cognitive modes is no longer controversial. Corroborating research since Sperry’s original work is overwhelming. Moreover, even in the midst of the argument about location, most scientists agree that for a majority of individuals, information-processing based primarily on linear, sequential data is mainly located in the left hemisphere, while global, perceptual data is mainly processed in the right hemisphere.

Clearly, for educators like myself, the precise location of these modes in the individual brain is not an important issue. What is important is that incoming information can be handled in two fundamentally different ways and that the two modes can apparently work together in a vast array of combinations. Since the late 1970s, I have used the terms L-mode and R-mode to try to avoid the location controversy. The terms are intended to differentiate the major modes of cognition, regardless of where they are located in the individual brain.

Over the past decade or so, a new interdisciplinary field of brain-function study has become formally known as cognitive neuroscience. In addition to the traditional discipline of neurology, cognitive neuroscience encompasses study of other higher cognitive processes such as language, memory, and perception. Computer scientists, linguists, neuroimaging scientists, cognitive psychologists, and neurobiologists are all contributing to a growing understanding of how the human brain functions.

Interest in “right brain, left brain” research has subsided somewhat among educators and the general public since Roger Sperry first published his research findings. Nevertheless, the fact of the profound asymmetry of human brain functions remains, becoming ever more central, for example, among computer scientists trying to emulate human mental processes. Facial recognition, a function ascribed to the right hemisphere, has been sought for decades and is still beyond the capabilities of most computers. Ray Kurzweil, in his recent book
The Age of Spiritual Machines
(Viking, 1999) contrasted human and computer capability in pattern seeking (as in facial recognition) and sequential processing (as in calculation):

In 1979, I proposed that drawing required a cognitive shift to R-mode, now postulated to be a massively parallel mode of processing, and away from L-mode, postulated to be a sequential processing mode. I had no hard evidence to support my proposal, only my experience as an artist and a teacher. Over the years, I have been criticized occasionally by various neuroscientists for overstepping the boundaries of my own field—though not by Roger Sperry, who believed that my application of his research was reasonable.