Drawing With Right Side of Brain

(continued)

Brain Bomeisler's drawing classes. We learn to draw.

– You usually see the signs, – Brian told us at the class, – the sign of eyes, the sign of mouth. It is a verbal block. If you can watch without using the left side of brain, you can see things as they are.  

He strikes home. It's absolutely true. Take a look at my pre-instruction self-portrait and self-portrait drawn after the classes.

On the first picture I have eyes much bigger than the ones I really have, I imagine myself younger than I am and much thinner. Before classes I really draw the signs, the symbols of things rather than things themselves.

– You are thinking too much. It's bad. – Brain said to me when I tried to measure the distance between eyes.

And he strikes home second time. It's absolutely true. And this habit hinders me all my life. And it hinders my learning to speak English too.

When last summer I went to conversation classes at the Bronx House, our teacher, Michael, said the same things: “When kids are in their early years, they can't read, they can't think all that much, but they are speaking to each other”. Writing in a language and speaking it have many sharp distinctions, and one of these is the fact that speaking is snap-action. You can give the answer now and only now, because later the conversation will be ended.

Only in a word, when found relations with other letters in a definite composition, the letter's life finds its meaning.

Every day many events take place around us. Maybe these events are the signs, the letters of language of life? Who knows? But when they stick together, we might be able to understand the sense of existence.

What is “DADA”?

“DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING “ (Tristan Tzara)

"Dada is the cabaret of the world, just as the world, the cabaret, is Dada.” (Richard Huelsenbeck)

“The negroes of the Kroo race call the tail of a sacred cow: DADA” (Tristan Tzara)

"Dada is a state of mind... Dada is artistic free thinking... Dada gives itself to nothing..." (Andre Breton)

“The word for a hobby horse, a children's nurse, a double affirmative in Russian and Romanian, is also: DADA” (Tristan Tzara)

Nobody knows what exactly Dada means, and the notions of it of various artists, writers, musicians and others interested in the Dada movement are as different as their works.

This exhibition represented nearly fifty artists and writers from six main DADA centers (Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Koln, New York and Paris), including paintings, collages, photomontage, readymade constructions, photographs and printed matter. Very, very interesting. But we couldn't take pictures, it was forbidden. What a pity!

There were many interesting displays, most of which we'd never seen before. It seems to me that it was there that I saw for the first time a “Bicycle wheel”, the first “readymade”, scandalous and provocative work of Marcel DuChamp. Take a look at my stool drawing. As it turned out I was drawing the part of that (quite forgotten at the time) “readymade”. Who'd have thought of that!

It was the third day of drawing classes, and the two accidental events combined as two letters into the beginning of one word. What does this word mean? I don't know yet.

– This portrait looks like a drawing by a German expressionist artist. – said Brian, when he looked at my portrait of Chris at the end of the fourth day.

Very interesting.

We really had an emotional shock after DADA exhibitions. And we went to the exhibitions' shop to buy something about DADA and about people that supported DADA movement. We are not arts critics or art collectors. We just like art. So we bought only one book – Dix by Eva Karcher.

The following two years were full of many important events that significantly changed our lives. And so until Brian said these words, “German expressionist”, the book stayed unopened.

Look at the painting by Otto Dix called Selbstbildnis mit Muse, 1924, placed on the cover of that book. Something similar, maybe the light, maybe facial expression, actually found its place on my Chris' portrait.

Another letter was added to that strange word.

Dix's social-critical realism had re-grown into style called Verism. In 1925 Dix was a contributor to the thematic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). By the beginning of World War II expressionism completely replaces social-critical realism in his works. High degree of accuracy of details, caricature and cartoon, grotesque, often freaks as characters are typical for Dix's works.

DADA movement was brought to life by a protest against the horrors of World War I. It existed only for a few years, but DADA really changed the further development of Western culture. Have you seen the dynamic design and photomontages at Bravo TV web site? It originates in DADA. Do you use layers working with the Photoshop? This technique started being used in DADA. Many approaches and technologies came into contemporary world from DADA. Many movements were hatched within DADA: Abstractionism, Expressionism, Cubism… And most of Paris dadaists joined the Surrealism movement when Andre Breton published Surrealism manifesto in 1924, although he defined it as pure psychic automatism

Andre Masson was the pioneer of automatic drawing. Among those who practiced it were Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, Jean Arp and Andre Breton. Then the technique extended its influence to painting (for example many of Miro's paintings started out as automatic drawings), then to other media including even computer graphics. It is thought that Pablo Picasso used it in his later work.

I don't know what the exact relationship between automatic drawing technique and drawing with right side of brain is. We were not drawing in a state of trance in our class, didn't improvise. We sat, looked and drew.

But the technique of using negative space to free at left-side-brain-blockade (simply put negative space may be defined as two holes: bagel hole plus hole around bagel), which Betty Edwards first introduced as an instrument of teaching to draw, in my opinion really is related to surrealist automatics drawing.

The negative space doesn't have a clear definition in verbal language, but still it is a part of composition. The results of drawing negative space are very interesting and unexpected. Take a look at next group of pictures. These are our drawings of chairs and stool – at the same time, with the same pencil, on the same paper, using the same technique. We sat, looked and drew.

But the results differ so much from person to person! Every the negative space chair drawing looks good, every chair has its own character, every picture has its own style, own composition, contrast, saturation and brightness. It is striking how drawing without left side of brain freed out our inside, unconscious aspirations.

Here's time to stop for now. I want only to add that the methodic of teaching to draw developed by Betty Edwards and used by Brian Bomisler really work. I can draw now and do it often and with much pleasure. This is the fourth letter in this mysterious word, and I hope it's far from the last one.

Brian has taught us the basics of work with the perception of relationships, known as proportions and perspective, the perception of edges, called "line" or contour, the perception of lights and shadows and composition. And he has shown us only some of his secrets. He has many more drawing classes, you can learn more about them at his web site. In particular I'm very much interested in his sketching class which I'm going to attend next.

I liked the idea of drawing with right side of brain. I am very glad that I read the book by Betty Edwards Drawing on the Artist Within. It was a pleasure to find and take these drawing classes. It is my good luck to have met Brain and Roya and my classmates and to have started upon this path. Thank you.