Betty Edwards - Theories On Drawing and Brain Function

Theories On Drawing and Brain Function

Edwards's method of drawing and teaching was revolutionary when she published it in 1979. It received an immediate positive response, and is now widely accepted by artists, teachers, and others around the world. Underlying the method is the notion that the brain has two ways of perceiving and processing reality — one verbal and analytic, the other visual and perceptual. Edwards' method advocates suppressing the former in favor of the latter. It focuses on disregarding preconceived notions of what the drawn object should look like, and on individually "seeing" edges or lines, spaces, relationships, and lights and shadows, later combining them and seeing them as a whole, or gestalt.

Edwards's early work was based in part on her understanding of neuroscience, especially the cerebral hemisphere research which suggested that the two hemispheres of the brain have different functions. She spoke of verbal/analytic processing as taking place in the brain's left hemisphere, and visual/perceptual processing as taking place in the right. When later research showed that the locus of these activities is much less clear cut, she began calling the two modes "left mode" and "right mode", respectively.