How drawing exercises your brain
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This document summarizes a presentation about how drawing exercises can benefit the brain. It discusses how drawing uses both sides of the brain and can help improve memory, focus, and creativity. The presenter taught drawing lessons to journalists and students and saw promising results, like improved writing ability. Participants reported being able to focus better and "the story just flowed" after drawing. The presentation encourages learning to draw as a way to exercise the whole brain and access different modes of thinking.
How drawing exercises your brain
- 1. How Drawing Exercises Your Brain And why it might make you a better writer Leah Kohlenberg Panel: Brain Flipping IRE NICAR Jacksonville, Florida March 3, 2017
- 2. Some tips before starting the exercise
- 3. What were you drawing? And on level of difficulty, how tough was it?
- 4. Here is the full drawing.
- 5. You were drawing this dude. Upside down.
- 6. I am a journalist turned artist. I would see these scenes, and they would stay in my head. They felt like a kind of truth to me.
- 7. I figured this out when I was 32, and I couldn’t draw or paint to save my life when I first started. So brain flipping became my way of life, my savior.
- 8. The drawing exercise is from the book: A must-read for anyone who wants to learn to draw Which leads us to ask the question: “What is the difference between the right and left sides of the brain?”
- 9. It’s not what you think! The common misnomer is that the right brain is “creative” and “intuitive”, while the left brain is “logical” and “fact-based.”
- 10. What does right and left brain really mean? Our left side is our verbal side. It’s anticipatory, and conceptual, and applies already known information to situations. The right brain is our visual/spatial side. It pays attention to visual cues - shapes, colors, patterns and other physical cues. It picks up immediate information and patterns.
- 11. Right versus left: Is the fist bigger or smaller than the head?
- 12. Is drawing, or right brain, a born ability? No. We all lean left, or verbal, because that’s the side we are exercising from birth, as we learn to talk. We don’t exercise the right brain, which is why most of us think we don’t know how to draw.
- 13. The neuroscience suggests drawing can help Activities that require intense concentration, like learning a language, help stave off dementia, memory loss and other brain deterioration. Interestingly enough, as we gain mastery over things, we stop using our whole brain, and that’s when the brain falls apart. Turns out the brain needs to be exercised much like the body does. Also, memory loss is not helped by trying to memorize say, for example, information on notecards. It’s improved by using activities that involve the whole brain.
- 14. Testing the theory that journalists should draw: My two experiments: *For 9 months, I’ve taught Reuters reporters in New York drawing. I’ve also started working with 2 other newsrooms. *Last October, I spent 1 week with students at the U. of Nevada Reno’s journalism school, offering drawing lessons paired with a writing assignment.
- 16. The results are preliminary, but promising I believe our experiment at least anecdotally demonstrated how drawing does seem to clear the mind in a way that promotes dealing with complex challenges. - Bob Felton, Professor, Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada-Reno
- 17. And my fave anecdotal story? All I know is that I walked into the room with writer's block, and then I spent an hour not thinking about the story at all - I was trying to draw a flower, and it was hard. After an hour, I went back to my desk, and the story just flowed. - Selam Berhe, Reuters-New York data team. The story she references was nominated for a Pulitzer in 2017
- 18. But I can’t draw a stick figure … can I learn to draw? The key is to set up the conditions that cause you to make the mental shift to a different mode of mental processing - the slightly altered state of consciousness that allows you to see well. In this drawing mode you will be able to draw your perceptions even though you may never have studied drawing. -Betty Edwards, author of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”
- 19. Why should I learn to draw? You will delve deeply into a part of your mind too often obscured by endless details of daily life. From this experience you will develop your ability to perceive things freshly in their totality, to see underlying patterns and possibilities for new combinations. Creative solutions to problems, whether personal or professional, will be accessible through new modes of thinking and new ways of using the power of your whole brain. -Betty Edwards (the venerable)
- 20. Come Learn to Draw with Me Tomorrow! Don’t let me tell you - let me show you! Come join me tomorrow for a drawing lesson. I’ll provide all materials, you provide an open mind and a willingness to learn. We’ll draw this:
- 21. Reading List BOOKS Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards This book has had three printings, I would recommend skipping the latest one and picking up the 1989 version. The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge, MD ARTICLES The Truth About The Left Brain / Right Brain Relationship/NPR, 12/2/13, by Tania Lombrozo Enslaved in Libya: One Woman’s Extraordinary Escape from the Islamic State, by Selam Gebrekidan (The Pulitzer nominated story mentioned in this discussion)
Editor's Notes
- #5: Giw
- #6: Can you identify the part you were drawing? Is it easier or harder to draw upside down? If I handed it to you and asked you to draw this Picasso drawing right side up, could you do it?
- #8: My bio here - I felt that there were scenes I wanted to capture, that told a story, and that a single picture could say a lot!
- #11: Both have their logical, and illogical sides. Both have their creative and non-creative points.
- #13: And brain researchers are showing that both hemispheres of the brain add different aspects to our concept and understanding of the world. In short, we need them both.
- #16: I just taught a beginning class to reporters at Reuters and the New York Times two weeks ago. Five of these people had NEVER drawn before. Can you guess which ones?
- #19: You will soon discover that drawing that can be learned by every normal person with average eyesight and average hand eye coordination - with sufficient ability, for example, to thread a needle or catch a baseball… if your handwriting is readable, or if you can print legibly, you have ample dexterity to draw well.