Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

The Definitive Edition

Betty Edwards

1979 • 321 pages

Ratings4

Average rating4.8

A revised edition of the classic bestselling how to draw book. A life-changing book, this fully revised and updated edition of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is destined to inspire generations of readers and artists to come. Translated into more than seventeen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used instructional drawing book. Whether you are drawing as a professional artist, as an artist in training, or as a hobby, this book will give you greater confidence in your ability and deepen your artistic perception, as well as foster a new appreciation of the world around you. This revised/updated fourth edition includes: • a new introduction; • crucial updates based on recent research on the brain's plasticity and the enormous value of learning new skills/ utilizing the right hemisphere of the brain; • new focus on how the ability to draw on the strengths of the right hemisphere can serve as an antidote to the increasing left-brain emphasis in American life-the worship of all that is linear, analytic, digital, etc.; • an informative section that addresses recent research linking early childhood "scribbling" to later language development and the importance of parental encouragement of this activity; • and new reproductions of master drawings throughout

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Margaret

As we start our homeschooling journey I am often looking to the future for possible choices for curriculum and resources. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is definitely a resource I plan to keep around. Art is something that has always escaped me. I remember in elementary school there was a teacher who walked around to different classrooms with a cart teaching art, but that is all I remember. I do not remember any of our classes or really learning anything in that situation. I remember doing kits from a hobby store and learning different things that way, but the only one that stuck with me was cross stitch and later in my married life quilting. In first grade I won first price for a coloring contest, drawing and coloring, but that was just me having fun. I never learned any real skills. There was one summer, I think it must have still been in my elementary school years, where I took all sorts of classes on pottery and drawing and other things in artistic pursuit. I loved it, but nothing ever went any further. My schools did not have art classes after that, until I entered high school, but those classes were all advanced and for people that had been involved in art their whole lives so it was too late to get started.

Now, a decade later I'm shown that it is not too late and that I indeed can learn to draw. That's fascinating! I have an advanced reader copy edition so I cannot promise that the final press print would appear like this. In my edition they are all black and white and some are quite dim and hard to see. But the real treasure in this book is not just in the images and examples but in the text. Reading through this book the student has a great teacher that cares about the skill of learning to draw. Yet there is more in psychology and neuroscience mentioned as well as teaching direction to draw. It is not surprising after reading through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain that this is “the world's most widely used drawing instruction book”. I agree that this book is written for all in the professional, academic and even hobbyist frame of mind.

Thanks to Tarcher/Penguin for providing an ARC for review.

posted: http://creativemadnessmama.com/blog/2012/05/09/drawing-on-the-right-side-of-the-brain/

May 8, 2012