Chapter Four - Day Four: Seeing as an Artist

Welcome to Day four. 

As I mentioned before, chapter four marks the beginning of Part Two of the book ‘Exercising the Basic Skills’. Basically the next few chapters, will take me through the basics which are very important. Although they might seem somewhat mundane they will be the foundation of my new drawing abilities. So the more they are practiced the more solid my foundation will be.

'Seeing like a Artist', takes you through the differences between your right and left hand sides of the brain and highlights how you need both to draw. With most people it is the left hand side of the brain that dominates their way of thinking, as it is the side that is used most often in our day to day lives.
There is a visual exercise in the book that I have included below to help you understand the concept of waking up your right hand side. If you look at the image you’ll see either two faces or a vase. So according to the book at the moment when you see the second image your brain has flipped sides.  I find it quite hard, I immediately see the two faces but then to see the vase takes a bit of practise.

Another technique used is by splitting the image down the middle and viewing one half of the page and then the whole image again, you force your right hand side of the brain to see the symmetry in the image both in the vase and the boy’s faces.

The next piece in the book is called ‘giving your left brain a vacation’. According to the book your left brain is what identifies objects and immediately labels them, by viewing the world upside down your left side can no longer identify common shapes and that is when your right hand side steps in - that is the just of it anyway.  So in order to put this theory into practice my next step was to draw the following pair of lips but as seen from upside down.  This allows you to use your right side of the brain and just concentrate on the lines rather than on what it actually is. Plus you have to work asymmetrically as well, which let me tell you is not easy.

We then move onto ‘Exploring your world as a Artist’.  If you can see everything around you as been a potential subject to draw, your choices will be endless.  The book suggests we take a look around our homes and gardens to try find potential subjects to draw.   So after a stroll and some staring into the distance with my coffee, I catch a wake up and turn the page.

Onto doodling! Doodling is apparently very good for you as it activates your brain and does wonders for you creatively. Armed with this information, any future boss is in for an argument!
On to project 4 and as you guessed is all about doodles. In this project though, you are taken through all the stages of seeing like an artist. It’s really very clever.

First you doodle - Check.
This as you know helps stimulate your creative juices.
Next you need to see beyond the lines and visualize - Check.
Here you need to see how many shapes and objects you can find in your doodle. You must turn your page around and see the doodle from all angles. This activates your discovering juices (for lack of a better word), you must colour in your shapes in different colours to help identify them for the next step.
The last step is there to let you practice your drawing again, as she says every time you draw you improve. But it also helps you realize all subject matters, no matter how complex, all start with a few simple lines.

Step One

Step Two

Drawings of  what I saw in my doodle

Next round Chapter 5 'Seeing and Drawing lines', sounds easy enough.  Till then.

(Please note: that photo examples are taken from "Drawing for Dummies by Brenda Hoddinott'' and the  above views are not representative of her and are purely based on a 3rd party view being Me! All snippets taken directly from the book are stated as been so)