Like Fine Wine, I Hope
One of my art group members has been on a jag of drawing hands and she is getting quite good at it. She says the secret is forgetting that she is drawing hands (notoriously challenging) and simply trying to capture shapes and shadows. Several members chimed in with other ways they have of fooling their brain, like turning a reference picture upside down before drawing it.
I was thinking back to when I originally decided I wanted to learn to draw. I was working as a librarian and found a book called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. At the time I was generally into learning about improving creativity and thinking, not just as related to art and such, but the many ways creative thinking can be used in life and work. The drawing book really appealed to me because it referenced brain science and psychology—two topics that have always interested me.
A few years before I had read a book or two about the “brain laterality” theory which says that each side of the brain contains certain capacities, and that people tend to be right or left brain dominant. The idea was that the left brain is more linear and logical while the right side is more wholistic and creative. This theory, of course, it too simplistic to explain what makes people the way they are and there are many exceptions to it, like when a person has an injury to one side of their brain and the one remaining side does a pretty good job of serving the roles of both sides. Regardless of its scientific validity, the theory does provide a handy framework for thinking about how you think—yes, metacogitating, my favorite!!
As the conversation about fooling your brain went on, I realized that one benefit of learning to draw is to learn how to control your own brain instead of just letting it run free, bounce off the walls, take shortcuts, shirk work, get into bad spots, etc. Perhaps this does not happen to all of you, but my brain is naturally very wild and unruly unless I make considerable effort to keep it in line. Whether or not you are learning to draw on the right side of the brain, the exercises in the book do seriously help with brain wrangling.
I am happy to say that all the years of metacogitating and brain wrangling are paying off. My mother presented me with a stack of pictures of myself when I was much, much younger and I have to say, I am feeling kind of sorry for that young woman. She could have done so much better for herself and been much happier and at peace if she had only known then what I know now. It seems most of us come to that conclusion at some point as we age.
Now, back to work on decluttering my surroundings and trying to create some order where chaos has had the upper hand. Yet another brain-wrangling task on a list that has no end!
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