Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, Betty Edwards – Book Review

I was hopeless at drawing just two weeks ago but you’ll have seen in my last couple of posts that this has changed and it’s all down to this book.  The difference it has made is absolutely shocking.  I’m finding that it also makes me see the world through new eyes, which has to be good news for my painting.

The book is a training course, with exercises.  It’s important that anybody reading the book does all the exercises and takes them all seriously.  At the end, you find you can draw and will probably never need to open the book again.  It does look good as a trophy book on the shelf though.

Among all the pseudoscience and exercises, there are really only four lessons in the book.  The first is on perceiving edges and drawing what you see on the “picture plane”.  The second is on the familiar subject of negative drawing: drawing the spaces between things rather than the things themselves.  Then the third lesson is on understanding perspective and being able to draw what you see using a pencil at arms length to get the distances and angles correct.  And finally the fourth lesson is on light and shade.  There was a strange chapter that came after this on using the intuitive right side of the brain to solve problems away from the drawing board; there is some truth to this but I thought the “look for the edges and spaces in your business problem” connection was pushing it.

Overall, this book is a miracle that changes me and gets an easy five palettes.  I’ve not read the equally highly praised Bert Dodson book on Keys To Drawing, so can’t yet compare the two.