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Drawing Upside Down

One way Betty Edwards has taught students to see what is actually there—as opposed to what they THINK they see—is to have them draw things upside down.  This skill is part of what she calls “Perception of Edges.”  (As always, these exercises come from The New Drawing on the Right Hand Side of the Brain, available at Amazon and elsewhere.  I purchased the companion notebook so I would have everything in one neat and tidy place, but you don’t need the workbook.  You can do all the exercises on your own paper.)

Here is a drawing by Pablo Picasso and my attempt to duplicate it in pencil from five years ago.  Not great…obviously it is larger than the reproduction on the facing page…sorry the sketch is so light…I tried the merge/layers thing to darken it, but my photoshop skills aren’t that advanced….

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Here is my 2009 version.  Better.

200905blogdrawing006And right side up:

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This time I decided to do all the upside down exercises (one still to go I think).  Here is a simple line drawing from a horse.   It makes me think that doing the exercise with a child’s coloring book could be useful…..

Upside down line-drawing of horse

Upside down line-drawing of horse

And right side up:

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I was VERY happy with how this turned out, as it is much more complex to me.  The horse’s face was not quite right.

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When I turned the picture right side up, I saw it instantly and was able to improve it.

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I don’t think I got the lance (in the knight’s left hand) quite right…. the head / helmet area might need some work, but also, life happens and I couldn’t spend all my time drawing….  good enough.  At least I’m practicing.

4 Responses to “Drawing Upside Down”

  1. Drawing upside down « See*Draw*Quilt*Learn Says:

    […] and finally got to blog about the next set of drawings in my workbook today.  You can see the pics here, but just for fun, here is one of the drawings: Sarah's Upside down copy of Picasso's […]

  2. Allie Says:

    That is SO much better than mine. I’m finding it very difficult to get into the groove of drawing every day….and I need to if I want to improve. Some of these drawings, the upside down ones, my mind also tricks me on. I recognize what the picture is and try to draw it looking at the whole. I find it easier if I can’t recognize the picture upside down. Doing the Picasso one, I kept saying to myself, the hand goes here, the mouth goes there, and that didn’t help lol!

  3. Caitlin Says:

    we had 2 draw the horse in my drawing class and i did pretty good 🙂 i had more problems w/ the forehead hair and the hooves but other than that it was gud im only 15 bout 2 turn 16 and this is my 1st drawing class ever and the teacher was imprssed as 2 how well i draw my hand w/o tracing and a self portrait (i thought i lukd horrible) she said it lukd just lyk me so.. idk but i think u did better than me w/ the horse lol

  4. Rosiie x Says:

    i had to draw the horse in my art class, it was AWESOME!! very easy to do xxx im onyl 12