Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – Three drawing exercises to get you going

The first thing Betty gets you to do in her Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book is to draw three things:

• something from memory
• a self portrait
• your hand

She then gets you to title, sign, and date your pictures. She does this because she wants you to see a record of where you started out with your drawing abilities, and hopefully see how you progress as you go.

Here are my three.

From Memory

This is the picture I was trying to draw from memory.

Self portrait

This is the portrait I was trying to recreate.

My hand

My actual hand in this position.

As you can see, the from memory drawing is the worst. This is to be expected. The memory isn’t good at catching find details in pictures. Only broad strokes.

You can see the self portrait is much better. Much more definition. More more clarity, because I was looking at a picture of myself when drawing it, and I could see way more lines and form.

The hand was perhaps the best. I am cheating here a bit. I took an drawing class in Disney World last year and they should be how to start with basic geometric shapes (a circle or oval) and then how to sketch in detail after.

Still. If you want to follow along with me in these exercises try it for yourself. Draw something from memory, a self portrait, and your hand in any position.

Check here for a walkthrough of the exercises we are going to do as we learn to draw. Next up I believe is the Faces Vases exercise so stay tuned for that.

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