Spoiler: If you’re planning to read and use the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
After doing the somewhat strange first assignment to awaken the right side of your brain I went on with the even stranger second assignment.
The author describes how she found that her students can copy very complicated paintings with great ease if she turns the painting up side down.
The theory is that people normally use symbols when they try to draw something. So you might draw eyes as two concentric circles even if the eyes in the painting are picture perfect. But when the painting is turned up side down people don’t recognize the subject and draw what the see instead of what they “should” draw.
The second assignment uses this same technique.
Only thing was that it didn’t work for me.
Turning the page I was presented with an up side down picture of what seemed to be Einstein. But the caption read that it was a Philippe Halsman. Turning the book up side down I still thought it looked like a picture of Einstein. Turning it back and re-reading the caption I found that the picture was taken by P. Halsman.
According to the text it was indeed a picture of Einstein and apparently most people have a lot of difficulty recognizing pictures that are up side down.
The assignment was to copy an up side down drawing. Picasso’s Portrait of Igor Stravinsky. The point was stressed that you should first draw the picture before turning the book around to see what it looked like. Otherwise this assignment won’t work.
But again I didn’t see the problem. Although it’s a drawing that is very difficult to copy I had no problems what so ever in recognizing what it was about: A man in jacket and tie sitting in a wooden chair.
Up side down
Half way through the drawing I decided to give up.
Not the drawing but my neat way of drawing.
This drawing has a lot of lines that are far from straight. But if you try to copy them in exactly the way Picasso drew them they tend to get very straight. I decide to draw a little sloppy. Hoping that it would bring some life to the drawing. And it did.
Right side up
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