LKB

Link to: Category:OSERB

Lousy Kiddie Brush Exercise

Duration: About 20 minutes

This exercise follows the Betty Edwards thesis by giving the left brain a task that it will refuse to do, allowing the right brain to take over the work.

Unlike the White-on-Black exercise, which gradually inducts the students into right-brain mode, this exercise tosses them into the deep end of the pool all at once. There is some frustration with this, but performing the exercise with a nude model overcomes a good deal of the left brain's tendency to rebel against this difficult task.

Plan:

This exercise occupies two ten-minute poses where the first of the poses also qualifies as ordinary practice drawing from the model.

Students are asked to draw the negative space around the model and stop at the contour of the surface of the model.

The model is placed in a relatively horizontal pose and the students are asked to draw everything outside the model, especially above. The line where the outside region ends coincides with the contour of the model, though they are supposed to focus on the negative space rather than the figure of the model.

The first pose is done with regular pencil on paper.

For the second pose we pass out really cheap plastic paint brushes and cups with tempera paint.

Although the brushes are terrible for painting features, it is possible to position the brush on the paper with some precision. The students are asked to spend the first two minutes painting a stripe in the upper half of the paper where the bottom edge of the stripe corresponds with the upper contour of the model. This is similar to what was done in the first pose, but it is only the contour of the lower edge of the stripe that is important.

In the remaining eight minutes of the ten-minute pose the students are asked to finish the drawing of the figure with ordinary pencil, working down from the contour painted earlier.

Drawing made with 2 minutes painting with a lousy kiddie brush and 8 minutes finishing in pencil.