Monday, January 4, 2010

A vase and Igor Stravinsky

Today, we start the Right brain part of the course. Yeah!!!! It`s the most fun!!!!

You will have read in your book all the discussions about the right brain, which is the creative part, the one that recognizes faces and shapes, enjoys music and pictures, but has no words, no critic, no analytical tools.

You`ll find with these exercises a way to become familiar with what Right brain activity looks like. It is a wonderful place, where there is no time, complete silence within. I call it meditation. Hours of no internal dialogue, no inner critic. Silence.

Here`s our first exercise. Download the picture below and make several copies. Note that there is a drawing for RIGHT handers and one for LEFT handers. You know who you are.

The idea, as you may have seen in your book, is to draw the mirror image of the profile, and complete the picture so that it looks like a vase, the side you draw identical to the model.

Print several copies of the drawing that applies to you, so you can do this drawing several times. You`ll improve as you go, but more importantly, you`ll start training your left brain to get out of the way, that the situation is under control, and that it can go for a hike.

Here`s the RIGHT HANDER`S sketch.


And here is the LEFT HANDER sketch:


After this drawing, you can create one yourself. On the left side if you`re right handed, draw the face of a monster: warts, crocked nose, curved chin, etc. Then draw the line at the top and the line at the bottom, and this time, replicate THAT FACE!!!! I`d love to see those drawings!!!!

After you finish these two drawings, here`s another WONDERFUL one. I love this one. I`ve used the format to create drawings that I was unable to replicate because of the LEFT brain.

Briefly, the idea is that you copy a drawing upside down, so that you don`t recognize the parts of the body you`re drawing, saying, with the left brain, this is a sleeve, this is a chair, etc.

The drawing is in your book. I`ll not replicate it. It is a drawing by Picasso, called Portrait of Igor Stravinsky. In my 1989 book, it`s on page 52. I know it`s available in all the books.

It might take you up to an hour to do this drawing. It is incredibly relaxing and soothing.

Just draw the lines in relation to each other, and to the margins of the book, and your paper. Take a full size sheet for this drawing, and take your time. But do it all in one sitting. Or as much as you can in one sitting.

Then date it.

Enjoy!

4 comments:

  1. Just curious-how many R handers and how many L handers? i am R handed.

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  2. Drawing the faces. Well at first, I didn't read all the instructions and drew the R hander pic and then the lefthander side--I did three. Then I read the instructions you had and I just drew the left hand side. None of them really caused any big dissonance--the one where I only had to draw one side wasn't difficult at all. It was the best of the four. I have seen this image many times in the past and we used it in psychology course a lot--so I can shift back and forth from faces to vase pretty easily--does this explain it?

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