I'm a doodlehead

Art has never been my forte. I despised handwriting drills, and was relieved when handwriting was no longer a graded subject starting in middle school. In art class, I drew people's heads in the style of Kepler--big, elliptical outlines. I remember one thing that I did like a lot was doing paper maché in 8th grade. However, when my friends pointed out that my squid's head resembled a phallus, I laughed sheepishly and decided to not enter it into the art contest, haha. But that's changed recently, and I have biology to thank for it. No, L112, L211, and L311 didn't inspire me to memorize plant structure, anatomy, or cell organelles by drawing them (that's a good idea though). The biology classes did, however, bore me out of my mind, so I found myself doodling the professor waving his lanky arms around trying to send his point across to the class, or the girl sitting in front of me diligently taking notes, or the AI in the front row who looked as bored as I was--our eyes met sometimes--eyelids drooping--silently confirming my suspicion, hahahaha.

I grew tired of being limited by my elementary school level drawing though, and borrowed The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, which focuses on how to use the right side of the brain to draw realistically (right side as in el derecho...which just happens to be the "right side" el lado correcto as well). I borrowed it mistakenly thinking that the Right side was the logical, scientific side. Oops. But the book has been an interesting read with fun exercises. After a month or so, I'm now almost done with the book. I think the most interesting thing that Edwards teaches--and that I want to share with anyone else who is learning how to draw--is to trust your eyes--drawing is simply looking at something and transferring what you see to a flat sheet of paper. Too often I used to look at something briefly, then look down and scrawl furiously for a minute or two, then look back up to refresh my memory, and go back to scrawling. Using my memory to draw put my brain into left mode, and I was symbolically drawing what I saw instead of really drawing it. I would note that my professor had two eyes, and draw generic eyes for him. My next subject also had generic eyes, so I slapped down two generic eyes again. The only difference I made in my drawings between eyes was eyelash length, arbitrarily making girls' eyelashes longer so that their gender could be easily identified (please don't hurt me Patis). Now, I try to notice the uniqueness of every person's eyes, based not only on that person's genetics and (in some cases) cosmetics, but also his or her mood at the time, my point of view, the lighting...everything. It's not that I have a checklist of "Factors that influence appearance of facial features" that I run through as I sketch. It's just that I look at the lines, contours, and values on the subject, and what I see takes into account all the variables that determine appearance. Of all the books I've read this summer, including The Da Vinci Code, The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, many volumes of manga, and lots of computer books, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has been the most enlightening AND entertaining. I realize that drawing realistically is nothing special--it's arguably the lowest level of art, done without any artistic interpretation. But drawing anime-style is next on my to-do list ^^ I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle. - Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing