The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [34]
For most tasks, the two modes are combined. Drawing a perceived object or person may be one of the few tasks that requires mainly one mode: the visual mode largely unassisted by the verbal mode. There are other examples. Athletes and dancers, for instance, seem to perform best by quieting the verbal system during performances. Moreover, a person who needs to shift in the other direction, from visual to verbal mode, can also experience conflict. A surgeon once told me that while operating on a patient (mainly a visual task, once a surgeon has acquired the knowledge and experience needed) he would find himself unable to name the instruments. He would hear himself saying to an attendant, “Give me the . . . the . . . you know, the . . . thingamajig!”
Learning to draw, therefore, turns out not to be “learning to draw.” Paradoxically, learning to draw means learning to access at will that system in the brain that is the appropriate one for drawing. Putting it another way, accessing the visual mode of the brain—the appropriate mode for drawing—causes you to see in the special way an artist sees. The artist’s way of seeing is different from ordinary seeing and requires an ability to make mental shifts at conscious level. Put another way and perhaps more accurately, the artist is able to set up conditions that cause a cognitive shift to “happen.” That is what a person trained in drawing does, and that is what you are about to learn.
Again, this ability to see things differently has many uses in life aside from drawing—not the least of which is creative problem solving.
Keeping the “Vase/Faces” lesson in mind, then, try the next exercise, one that I designed to reduce conflict between the two brain-modes. The purpose of this exercise is just the reverse of the previous one.
Upside-down drawing: Making the shift to R-mode
Familiar things do not look the same when they are upside down. We automatically assign a top, a bottom, and sides to the things we perceive, and we expect to see things oriented in the usual way—that is, right side up. For, in upright orientation, we can recognize familiar things, name them, and categorize them by matching what we see with our stored memories and concepts.
When an image is upside down, the visual clues don’t match.
“The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture—however unreasonable that may sound . . . The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being [Henri’s emphasis], a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. [The picture] is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.”
From The Art Spirit by American artist and teacher Robert Henri, B. Lippincott Company, 1923.
The message is strange, and the brain becomes confused. We see the shapes and the areas of light and shadow. We don’t particularly object to looking at upside-down pictures unless we are called on to name the image. Then the task becomes exasperating.
Seen upside down, even well-known faces are difficult to recognize and name. For example, the photograph in Figure 4-4 is of a famous person. Do you recognize who it is?
You may have had to turn the photograph right side up to see that it is Albert Einstein, the famous scientist. Even after you know who the person is, the upside-down image probably continues to look strange.
Fig. 4-4. Photograph by Philippe Halsman.
Inverted orientation causes recognition problems with other images (see Figure 4-5). Your own handwriting, turned upside down, is probably difficult for you to figure out, although you’ve been reading it for years. To test this, find an old shopping list or letter in your handwriting and try to read it upside down.
A complex drawing, such as the one shown upside down in the Tiepolo drawing, Figure 4-6, is almost indecipherable. The (left) mind just gives up on it.
Upside-down drawing
An exercise that reduces mental conflict
We shall use this gap in the abilities of the left