drawing on the right side of the brain was recommended to me, and i’ve just started to read it. there’s an awful lot of chat before she gets down to the meat, but i guess that’s trying to convince people who really don’t think they can draw.

i can draw - to a degree. i liked drawing at school and never found it anywhere near as hard as i did painting. i’m quite good at representational drawing, but i always find the resulting pictures rather bland. i’d like to be able to draw expressively and creatively.

i’m interested in what the author says about developing your understanding of line and space through drawing, and working your way up to colour work and painting. i think i got kinda half way through the change in perception she describes during my art classes at school, but not the full way, hence why i find painting so hard.

so here’s my “before” self portrait. it kinda looks like me, though madam didn’t recognise it was me until i took my glasses off :D she reckons it looks like me after i’ve had a shower cos i didn’t draw in all of my hair. my pencil kept breaking so i took that as a sign to finish, it took about 10 minutes. the features are all wonky cos i didn’t try particularly hard to get them in exactly the right places - mostly cos i didn’t have a rubber, so i didn’t want to draw guide lines. so the individual bits are quite a good representation, but their overall arrangement is all to pot. i could only find a 6b (though in general i prefer really soft pencils) so it’s a bit over-contrasty.