The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [30]
The Incas of ancient Peru considered left-handedness a sign of good fortune.
Mayan Indians were pro-right: the twitching of a soothsayer’s left leg foretold disaster.
From The Left-Handers’ Handbook, by J. Bliss and J. Morella.
A comparison of left-mode and right-mode characteristics
Handedness and drawing
Does left-handedness, then, improve a person’s ability to gain access to right-hemisphere functions such as drawing? From my observations as a teacher, I can’t say that I have noticed much difference in ease of learning to draw between left- and right-handers. Drawing came easily to me, for example, and I am extremely right-handed—though, like many people, I have some right/left confusion, perhaps indicating bilateral functions. (A person with right/left confusion is one who says “Turn left,” while pointing right.) But there is a point to be made here. The process of learning to draw creates quite a lot of mental conflict. It’s possible that left-handers are more used to that kind of conflict and are therefore better able to cope with the discomfort it creates than are fully lateralized right-handers. Clearly, much research is needed in this area.
Some art teachers recommend that right-handers shift the pencil to the left hand, presumably to have more direct access to R-mode. I do not agree. The problems with seeing that prevent individuals from being able to draw do not disappear simply by changing hands; the drawing is just more awkward. Awkwardness, I regret to say, is viewed by some art teachers as being more creative or more interesting. I think this attitude does a disservice to the student and is demeaning to art itself. We do not view awkward language, for instance, or awkward science as being more creative and somehow better.
A small percentage of students do discover by trying to draw with the left hand that they actually draw more proficiently that way. On questioning, however, it almost always comes to light that the student has some ambidexterity or was a left-hander who had been pressured to change. It would not even occur to a true right-hander like myself (or to a true left-hander) to draw with the less-used hand. But on the chance that a few of you may discover some previously hidden ambidexterity, I encourage you to try both hands at drawing, then settle on whichever hand feels the most comfortable.
Sigmund Freud, Hermann von Helmholtz, and the German poet Schiller were afflicted with right/left confusion. Freud wrote to a friend:
“I do not know whether it is obvious to other people which is their own or other’s right or left. In my case, I had to think which was my right; no organic feeling told me. To make sure which was my right hand I used quickly to make a few writing movements.”
—Sigmund Freud
The Origins of Psycho-
analysis
A less august personage had the same problem:
Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, that the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin. “Well,” he said slowly . . .
—A. A. Milne
The House at Pooh Corner
Psychologist Charles T. Tart, discussing alternate states of consciousness, has said, “Many meditative disciplines take the view that . . . one possesses (or can develop) an Observer that is highly objective with respect to the ordinary personality. Because it is an Observer that is essentially pure attention/awareness, it has no characteristics of its own.” Professor Tart goes on to say that some persons who feel that they have a fairly well-developed Observer “feel that this Observer can make essentially continuous observations not only within a particular d-SoC (discrete state of consciousness) but also during the transition between two or more discrete states.”
—“Putting the Pieces
Together,” 1977
In the chapters to follow, I will address the instructions to right-handers and thus avoid tedious repetition