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Summary: It took me from stick men to portraits in three days.
Review: I can't emphatize how good this book is. I used to consider myself absolutely useless at drawing. I barely managed to pass exams at art classes at school. Now I am drawing fairly decent portraits from almost everyone I know. The book focueses on seeing the things' real shapes and it is just this non rational, non mathematically based approach that makes it work. I used to have big problems with proportions and perspective, and Betty Edwards made me realise it's all a matter of looking at things with loving attention (and not attaching a name to the bit you are drawing). This book has made me realise I've lost many years of my life blocking myself as an artist. Drawing is a skill that everyone can learn. Do it with this book!
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Summary: Classic
Review: and thats what it is a classic in its own right almost everyone of my art teachers knows of this book and has read it one time or another its so good ! seriously and the before and after examples are really astounding !
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Summary: Absolutely awesome !
Review: I got the book 'cus I had nothing to loose and its SO good.. the before and after examples of students are amazing but it really works.The best.
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Summary: Physician/Brain-author endorses this classic!!
Review: Used this book myself when completing an art minor. After studying the brain, it all made sense. This is a classic and a must for any artist, professional or amateur. May I also recommend "The Care and Feeding of Your Brain" as a companion for tuning up your brain and getting yourself into a nice calm receptive artistic state...all the best, Kenneth Giuffre MD, author, "The Care and Feeding of Your Brain"
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Summary: I prefer the 1989 edition of "Drawing..."
Review: I'm in a drawing course at a community college where the instructor has used the 1989 edition for a number of years with good results. Needing the book, I purchased the new edition (by mistake) through Amazon and must return it. However, having now reviewed both books, I believe that the new edition suffers by comparison. There are too many mechanical aids required in the new edition, and the mechanics of their application is poorly and vaguely explained, which will discourage some people. My general feeling is also that the author is stretching to revitalize the work and, in the process, has weakened its impact. Though I find her work valuable and helpful, I'm distracted by the lengthly and repetitious discussions about the need to silence the left brain and to allow the right brain to function. A great deal of verbiage could have been saved if most of this was edited out and replaced by a short phrase to simply remind the reader of this necessity. However, having said these things, let me also say that I have found the book to be valuable and helpful in my own efforts to gain solid drawing skills that should allow me to render better value sketches before I start my watercolors.
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Summary: Improving on the best!
Review: It's been 20 years since the first "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" came out. My copy of the book is so dog-eared, it looks like it is 50, not 20, years old! But this new edition was well worth the wait, with lots of new information, new research, and new learning tips on how to draw and how to tap into that creative potential we all have.
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Summary: Twenty years later, the journey begins again
Review: As in the first two editions of "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", Dr. Betty Edwards once more presents the beginning student of drawing with that same seemingly impossible task: copy a Picasso sketch. . .upside down! And thus begins the journey into that part of the brain that most of us didn't know exists, the artistic genius within us all. True to her scientific approach to teaching the basics of drawing, Dr. Edwards updates her twice-before best-seller with over 50% new material based on recent research into the workings of the human brain. Some lessons are moved around and to her list of the 5 basic skills that make up realistic drawing (perception of edges; negative space; relationships; light and shadow; and of the whole) Dr. Edwards adds 2 more: memory and imagination. Perhaps most telling are the "before and after" illustrations showing how much one can learn in just a few days of instruction and diligent practice. The obviously painful, labored scrawls of adults discouraged from drawing since childhood sit next to drawings that exude confidence and ease. The reader is amazed when he or she can look upon a similar pair of images produced in the first few days of reading the book. Amazingly, the paperback cover price of this most recent edition is a single dollar more than the 1989 cover price. Consider it a bargain.
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Summary: Opened up a world for me
Review: I am one of the people mentioned in the book who quit drawing early in life and decided I "just couldn't draw". As the book shows you, it is not the drawing, it is the seeing, that allows you to accurately record your perceptions on paper, ie. to draw. I don't have a lot of time to devote to this new pastime, but I have done enough to know that I can, indeed, draw, and what's more, I can improve my skill over time. If you are the typical left-brained kinda person (I am a computer type) that thinks "I just can't draw"--get this book and go through it at your own pace. You will be amazed, I guarrantee it.
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Summary: a re-hash of other, equally disparate instruction
Review: The novelty of the title is appropriate to the NEW AGE genre in style and language. Were one to purchase a title such as "Drawing On My Left Elbow" one would have an equally diffuse sense of the obscure methodology of this "new" way of drawing. I mean, really, forget Michaelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt et al of the Rennaissance. Now it is fashionable to approach art with the all the "NEW & IMPROVED" Madison Avenue advertising hype of a laundry soap commercial, where one is convinced that one actually draws with a half of a brain, and falsely suggests that former methods employed only the LEFT SIDE of the brain, titled in the fashion of naming of 1960's rock bands. There is virtually no intermediate drawing process in Betty Edwards book. One sees completed drawings, inferring that if the student merely sees the pictures, it will result in equally completed drawings, with not even so much as an errant smudge on the neat white paper. The text suggests that the student practice of course, but the author will not be accompanying the student during the journey, and none of the illustrations contained in Edward's book indicate the intermediate drawings, the practice, the failures and disappointments at representing form that every new student feels. This is where the student is quite literally abandoned to the wolves of personal insecurity, frustration, disappointment, and the resultant low self-estimation. After all, Edwards can actually draw...and you can't. That, in my view, is a complete failure in art instruction.
Edward's book is also a perpetuation of a common myth regarding TEACHING of any kind; that, if one can DO something well, one can also TEACH it. That just isn't so. Oddly, one would never think of teaching woodworking by showing completed cabinetry; but somehow it seems fashionable to infer that there is a shortcut to training eye and hand. There are no shortcuts. It was true 700 years ago. It is true today. There is good drawing instruction by Will Pogany, Cortina Famous Artists School, Walt Reed, and absolutely, Robert Beverly Hale, and any serious drawing student would be well-advised to examine such books, in my opinion.
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Summary: Funny how many people can't draw in art classes...
Review: I started my art experience with this book, and to it I give much credit. For me, it was like a "light switch" had been turned on. One day I could not draw, the next day I could. I did take the lessons seriously, and completed the book. If you are new, this book delivers on it's promises. It doesn't matter if the right/left part is correct or not, the fact is - the methods work. There are many other things to master, but the ability to draw correctly is what separates real artists from the fake ones, of which there are many. Drawing is the foundation. If you want to learn how to draw, this book will take you where you want to go faster than any other. Later, when you are in that expensive oil painting class, and 11 out of the 15 students are stuck because they can't draw, you will be thankful that you started off with this book. You will be one of those who can at the very least render your subject correctly.
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