Thursday, April 8, 2010

Blind Drawing: Fun, good practice and Swap idea


Here is my first initial blind drawing. My vegetable patch in the back yard. One can just make out the garden edging and the tomato plants, and stakes.


I used a soft B pencil which made a nice effect when I drew on the rough gesso finish of a hard cardboard backed frame. I painted a little colour in a pen and wash technique and then soaked it in tea overnight. Added a little penwork.

Not too bad for a first attempt and I surprised myself by how much my right brain could do without the dominant left hemisphere taking over. see more here:

A "Blind" drawing for 20 minutes of a very mundane object can lead to a quite unusual artistic creation. Yet if you let your dominant logical side take over, I feel sure it would be quite different as the left will pull up the objects in site from its catalogue of known things to draw. This will result in a standard version that you might have drawn as a child, and will not be a drawing of angles and shapes in front of you. Yet it is precisely angles and shapes that your mind needs to concentrate on in order to draw better. Left brain sees the whole object and tries to get your hand to replicate it. Right brain sees negative space, angles and shapes which let the drawing become more fluid, more natural and more realistic.

And then you can play with a lot of colour and effects... that is the fun part!

good luck....

2 comments:

  1. Hi
    Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I have nearly finished the quilt despite the cat's "help".
    I love your blind drawing, the brain is an amazing thing!

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  2. It certainly is Marg, and so much of it is still unknown to scientists!

    ReplyDelete