About the Class

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain®
Five Day Intensive Drawing Class

This intensive class is designed for individuals with little or no prior drawing training and perhaps believe that learning to draw well is only possible for those lucky people with "inborn talent". However, it has been proven that the global skill of drawing any perceived object, person or place requires five basic component perceptual skills. These skills are the perception of edges, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows, and the whole or gestalt. Global or whole skills, such as reading, driving and drawing, in time become automatic with the integration of the component skills. Of course the initial learning process maybe a struggle; first in learning the new component skill and then with the smooth integration of all the components. Each skill is learned and merged with the others until you are simply drawing - just as you found yourself simply driving or reading.

Thousands of students have taken this course, based on the work of Dr. Betty Edwards. By the end of this 5 day workshop you will see a remarkable change in your drawing skills.

Classes are held for 5 consecutive days from 9:00am to 5:00pm with a 1 hour lunch break.

Each day begins with a lecture on one of the five skills needed to draw any perceived object, person or place. After the lecture students do drawing exercises for the remainder of the morning through the afternoon with my guidance. The day ends with a critique of the day's work.

We learn the five skills needed to draw any perceived object, person or place.
These perceptual skills are:
--The perception of edges using pure or blind contour drawing.
--The perception of spaces using negative space.
--The perception of angles and relationships using the skill of sighting.
--The perception of lights and shadows using the skill of light logic.
--The perception of the Gestalt or whole which comes from the previous four perceptual skills.

--Day One starts with a lecture on the principles of brain hemisphere management, followed by students copying a Picasso drawing upside-down. This exercise gives the brain a task that the left hemisphere will turn down and the drawings will therefore be perceptual rather than symbolic. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is all about turning off the left hemisphere or giving the brain a task that the left hemisphere cannot do – therefore allowing the right perceptual side of the brain to take over. Later in the day we experiment with blind contour drawings to enable us to slow down our vision and tap into the right hemisphere.

--Day Two starts with a lecture discussing the use of the picture plane followed by a detailed drawing of our hand. This exercise, with the use of the flattened picture plane, teaches students to draw a three dimensional subject on a two dimensional surface. In the afternoon, a lecture on negative space followed by a drawing of a chair done strictly in negative space, teaches the right brain to look at the spaces between objects to render the drawing rather than drawing the lines of the object.

--Day Three starts with a lecture on the skill of sighting followed by a drawing of a room corner or, weather permitting a drawing outside. This learning is also called perspective and proportion. The skill of sighting is crucial to observation because every drawing is about the relationships between objects, angles and shapes.

--Day Four begins with a lecture on the proportions of the head in profile, followed by a drawing of a fellow student in profile. The key learning for this day is turning off the verbal left hemisphere and its desire to make symbolic associations. One student draws for 20 minutes while another poses and visa versa for the afternoon.

--Day Five starts with a discussion of light logic, also known as light and shadow. We learn a shading technique called hatching and the value scale of light to dark, which allows for the rendering of dramatic light and shadow within a drawing. We examine the proportions of the full faced head in preparation for the days drawing. Using grounded paper, all the perceptual skills we have learnt so far, and by looking for the shapes of the lights and shadow (negative space), students learn to use their eraser as a drawing tool together with the pencil.

Each day, a lecture and demonstration precede the workshop drawing exercise. Although it may seem that the instruction concentrates heavily on portraiture; this being the most difficult subject it incorporates all the drawing skills needed to draw accurately, and once learned can be used to render any other subject: object, person or place. During the last three days students work on one drawing for 4 to 6 hours. I often hear comments like, "I can't believe it's 5 o'clock, feels like noon." In other words, it is easy to loose track of time while in the drawing mode.