I’ve just started to read The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. I heard about it in passing and only then did I realise that it’s pretty famous.
It’s based on the idea (or is it a fact now?) that it’s the right-hand side of the brain which is the creative side and that we need to harness it consciously to make the best use of it.
I can see where Betty’s coming from. Ask me to draw something and I’ll start slavishly copying it and wondering if squared paper would help. In other words adopting a very intellectual, left-brain, approach.
It’s not new. People have been saying for centuries things like ‘Don’t try, do’ or ‘Don’t think about it too much, just be yourself, be natural, go with your instincts, you’ll never be any good if you’re not enjoying yourself’ – I’m sure they’re all connected. No doubt the right-hand side of the brain can help in all forms of creative endeavour. Writing sonnets, perhaps.
I seem to have spent my life throwing myself in one thing after another, always taking it very seriously, reading, practising, never becoming as good as I would like, and often giving up. A bit like Bouvard and Pecuchet in Flaubert’s (unfinished!) novel. Here’s a few of them, ignoring the really serious enthusiasms like work, sex and religion.
Music: I started with the harmonica and moved on to the guitar. I still have that guitar. It’s standing in a corner of the room, stringless. Once I attached one of those contraptions, so that I could play the mouth organ at the same time. But I never managed to sound like Sonny Boy Williamson or Chet Atkins. I seemed to best with the paper and comb.
Today, I am getting a second-hand keyboard from my son. Will I never learn? Or, will I ever learn?
Art: I tried drawing once before. I remember filling sheet after sheet with ovals, dissected with lines to indicate the basic composition of the human face. I practised eyes, ears and mouths. I drew a fantastic disembodied nose once, which made the whole exercise almost worthwhile, but that’s as far as I got, even though I diversified into cartoons and calligraphy.
Sport: I was never any good at sport, especially team games, unless I was captain of course, but that does require a modicum of skill. At school I signed up for cross-country running as a way of avoiding football, and played a bit of squash, because it involved less running after the ball.
I tried pool, probably inspired by Paul Newman in The Hustler. I bought a six-foot table and played at home. I had to push it against a wall and learn to play with only three sides of the table available. I would still enjoy it, I suppose, but tables seem have disappeared from pubs.
But darts was my passion for a year or two. It started when a few of us from the library entered the council’s annual darts competition. We were knocked out in the first round, but were so pleased with our performance (against the Personnel department) that we thought all we had to do was practice for a year and we’d walk away with the trophy. So we put up a board in the staff room, went to a darts pub every Monday night. Most of us bought boards and tungsten darts and practiced, practiced, practiced.
After a year, we drew the Fire Brigade and were knocked out in the first round.
But for me at least the bug had well and truly bitten. I memorised finishes, had a strict training schedule – round the board on doubles, round the board on shanghais, finishes from 41 up and back again, all interspersed by sessions on the treble twenty. I tried different stances, different weights of dart and different lengths of dart.
After all that I only once scored a treble twenty in competition, and then lost the leg because I couldn’t manage double one.
I’d better continue this tomorrow.
It’s based on the idea (or is it a fact now?) that it’s the right-hand side of the brain which is the creative side and that we need to harness it consciously to make the best use of it.
I can see where Betty’s coming from. Ask me to draw something and I’ll start slavishly copying it and wondering if squared paper would help. In other words adopting a very intellectual, left-brain, approach.
It’s not new. People have been saying for centuries things like ‘Don’t try, do’ or ‘Don’t think about it too much, just be yourself, be natural, go with your instincts, you’ll never be any good if you’re not enjoying yourself’ – I’m sure they’re all connected. No doubt the right-hand side of the brain can help in all forms of creative endeavour. Writing sonnets, perhaps.
I seem to have spent my life throwing myself in one thing after another, always taking it very seriously, reading, practising, never becoming as good as I would like, and often giving up. A bit like Bouvard and Pecuchet in Flaubert’s (unfinished!) novel. Here’s a few of them, ignoring the really serious enthusiasms like work, sex and religion.
Music: I started with the harmonica and moved on to the guitar. I still have that guitar. It’s standing in a corner of the room, stringless. Once I attached one of those contraptions, so that I could play the mouth organ at the same time. But I never managed to sound like Sonny Boy Williamson or Chet Atkins. I seemed to best with the paper and comb.
Today, I am getting a second-hand keyboard from my son. Will I never learn? Or, will I ever learn?
Art: I tried drawing once before. I remember filling sheet after sheet with ovals, dissected with lines to indicate the basic composition of the human face. I practised eyes, ears and mouths. I drew a fantastic disembodied nose once, which made the whole exercise almost worthwhile, but that’s as far as I got, even though I diversified into cartoons and calligraphy.
Sport: I was never any good at sport, especially team games, unless I was captain of course, but that does require a modicum of skill. At school I signed up for cross-country running as a way of avoiding football, and played a bit of squash, because it involved less running after the ball.
I tried pool, probably inspired by Paul Newman in The Hustler. I bought a six-foot table and played at home. I had to push it against a wall and learn to play with only three sides of the table available. I would still enjoy it, I suppose, but tables seem have disappeared from pubs.
But darts was my passion for a year or two. It started when a few of us from the library entered the council’s annual darts competition. We were knocked out in the first round, but were so pleased with our performance (against the Personnel department) that we thought all we had to do was practice for a year and we’d walk away with the trophy. So we put up a board in the staff room, went to a darts pub every Monday night. Most of us bought boards and tungsten darts and practiced, practiced, practiced.
After a year, we drew the Fire Brigade and were knocked out in the first round.
But for me at least the bug had well and truly bitten. I memorised finishes, had a strict training schedule – round the board on doubles, round the board on shanghais, finishes from 41 up and back again, all interspersed by sessions on the treble twenty. I tried different stances, different weights of dart and different lengths of dart.
After all that I only once scored a treble twenty in competition, and then lost the leg because I couldn’t manage double one.
I’d better continue this tomorrow.
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