Tip 1. Drawing should become a habit, like walking and talking.

Draw every day. Make it a habit like cleaning your teeth, or taking the dog for a walk. Your dog needs exercise and so does your drawing hand. What’s more, your left brain needs to practise connecting with your right brain, every day.

Read Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, or better still, enrol in a drawing course that uses her approach. I devised the course Drawing for the Terrified over 20 years ago in the UK, when I was asked to teach a group of complete beginners at an adult education college. I read Betty’s book, tried out her exercises on the group and modified them according to the group’s requirements. The title Drawing for the Terrified comes from Richard Box’s excellent book of the same name, which was also an invaluable resource in developing the course. I brought the course to Australia in 2001 and have been refining my approach ever since, building on the feedback that my students give me.

One of the most frequent student responses is the comment that having read Betty Edwards’ book, they had found it very difficult to apply themselves to the task without fellow travellers. The workshops provided not only the right atmosphere for beginning the journey, but also living proof that everyone has similar problems in ‘seeing,’ – even the most accomplished artists. In layman’s terms (and that’s all I ever use, as I’m not a scientist) it’s all about letting that right brain talk to the left one, in a language that doesn’t use words.

In order to learn to draw objectively, we have to ‘trick’ ourselves into drawing what we see, rather than what we think we are seeing.

Go to my Drawing for the Terrified page https://touchpaperdrawingtips.wordpress.com/drawing-for-the-terrified for information about the latest courses that I’m running in Adelaide.