The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [114]
For training yourself in visual memory, the key is to decide to remember—in a sense, to take a visual “snapshot” of an image you want to retain in memory. This means developing your ability to image—to see something with your mind’s eye well enough that later you can “look at” the image. Then, using the first five skills, you draw the image “seen in the mind’s eye.”
Additionally, whatever you draw will etch itself into your memory. Call up those images; see again the master drawings you have studied, the faces of friends you have drawn. Image also scenes that you have never viewed, and draw what you see through your mind’s eye. Drawing will give the image a life and reality of its own.
Perceptual skill seven: The “dialogue”
Skill seven takes us all the way to the art of the museums, I believe. I briefly outlined some main aspects of this skill in Chapter Ten, page 221. The artist has a vague idea, let’s say, to draw a creature that never existed, perhaps a winged dragon. The artist has a vague imagined image and begins to draw, making a few marks that perhaps indicate the head of the dragon. Those marks trigger an imagined extension and elaboration of, say, the head and neck. The artist “sees” or envisions these elaborated details on the paper. The artist then draws in the imagined extension with new marks. That triggers an expanded image, perhaps the body and wings, now “seen” on the drawing. The artist is now able to draw those parts. And so the drawing progresses as a result of this “dialogue” between the imagined creature in the drawing which the artist makes real with the pencil marks. This dialogue continues until the artwork is finished.
You experienced this skill to some extent in your light/ shadow drawings, and you can now nurture this beginning. You will find it most satisfying, I assure you. One way to practice the dialogue is to find or make stained paper, stained perhaps with spilled coffee or smeared paint or even mud. Let the paper dry and then try to “see” images in the stains. Reinforce these images with pencil or pen or colored pencil. This is the so-called “da Vinci device.” Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci recommended that student artists should practice seeing fanciful images in the stained walls of the city in order to improve their imaging abilities.
“It is not to be despised, in my opinion, if, after gazing fixedly at the spot on the wall, the coals in the grate, the clouds, the flowing stream, one remembers some of their aspects; and if you look at them carefully you will discover some quite admirable inventions. Of these the genius of the painter may take full advantage, to compose battles of animals and of men, of landscapes or monsters, of devils and other fantastic things.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Clearly, these skills have other applications. Use your imaging ability to solve problems. Look at a problem from several viewpoints and different perspectives. See the parts of the problem in their true proportion. Instruct your brain to work on the problem while you sleep or take a walk or do a drawing. Scan the problem to see all of its facets. Image dozens of solutions without censoring or revising. Play with the problems in the antic/serious intuitive mode. The solution is very likely to present itself nicely when you least expect it.
Drawing on the capabilities of the right side of your brain, develop your ability to see ever more deeply into the nature of things. As you look at people and objects in your world, imagine that you are drawing them, and then you will see differently. You will see with an awakened eye, with the eye of the artist within you.
Afterword: Is Beautiful Handwriting a Lost Art?
TO DAY, HANDWRITING IS NO LONGER a subject of interest. Like the times tables, moral sayings, and polite manners at tea parties, handwriting—if it is thought of at all—is relegated to quaint customs of the past century. Yet when I ask a group of people, “How many of you would like to improve your handwriting?” nearly all the hands go up. If I ask