Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain : The Definitive, 4th Edition

About the book

A revised edition of the classic bestselling how to draw book. A life-changing book, this fully revised and updated edition of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is destined to inspire generations of readers and artists to come. Translated into more than seventeen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used instructional drawing book. Whether you are drawing as a professional artist, as an artist in training, or as a hobby, this book will give you greater confidence in your ability and deepen your artistic perception, as well as foster a new appreciation of the world around you. This revised/updated fourth edition includes: - a new introduction; - crucial updates based on recent research on the brain's plasticity and the enormous value of learning new skills/ utilizing the right hemisphere of the brain; - new focus on how the ability to draw on the strengths of the right hemisphere can serve as an antidote to the increasing left-brain emphasis in American life-the worship of all that is linear, analytic, digital, etc.; - an informative section that addresses recent research linking early childhood scribbling to later language development and the importance of parental encouragement of this activity; - and new reproductions of master drawings throughout

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2013 Nautilus Books for a Better World Silver winner as Best Creative Process Book

Betty Edwards Biography

Betty Edwards (born 1926 in San Francisco, California) is an American art teacher and author best known for her 1979 book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (as of April 2012, in its 4th edition). She taught and did research at the California State University, Long Beach, until she retired in the late 1990s. While there, she founded the Center for the Educational Applications of Brain Hemisphere Research.

Professional life

She received a Bachelor's in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA, 1947), a Master's of Art from California State University, Northridge, and a Doctorate in Art, Education, and Psychology from UCLA (1976). Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has remained the dominant book on its subject, used as a standard text in many art schools, and has been translated and published in many foreign languages, including French, Spanish, German, Polish, Hungarian, Chinese, and Japanese. Her company, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, develops special drawing tools, materials, and videos to help individuals learn to draw. An artist and painter, she taught at high school level in the Los Angeles public school district (Venice High School), then at community college, and from 1978 until her retirement in 1991, in the Art Department at California State University, Long Beach. All of her teaching experience has been in art: drawing, painting, art history, art-teacher training, and color theory. In addition to teaching drawing workshops around the world, she has also done business consulting with major national and international corporations to enhance creative problem solving.

Theories on drawing and brain function

Edwards's method of drawing and teaching was revolutionary when she published it in 1979. It received an immediate positive response, and is now widely accepted by artists, teachers, and others around the world. Underlying the method is the notion that the brain has two ways of perceiving and processing reality – one verbal and analytic, the other visual and perceptual. Edwards' method advocates suppressing the former in favor of the latter. It focuses on disregarding preconceived notions of what the drawn object should look like, and on individually "seeing". Drawing, says Edwards, has five component skills of perception and drawing: Edges and lines (includes copying drawings and contour drawing exercises) Negative space (i.e. space between items) Relationships (i.e. perspective and proportion between things) Light and shadows (shading) The whole: gestalt which emerges as the first four are taught Then there are two additional skills, numbers 6 and 7: Drawing from memory Drawing from imaginationEdwards's early work was based in part on her understanding of neuroscience, especially the cerebral hemisphere research which suggested that the two hemispheres of the brain have different functions. To avoid the so-called "location controversy" (how the two major cognitive functions are dis ... Read full biography