It worked on me. The change was surprisingly fast, in a couple days I went from “no drawing talent, stick figures only” to one-minute sketches similar to this or this (not mine, but should give the idea). Getting to this level doesn’t require any technique, it’s purely a conceptual shift. You learn how to trick your mind into “drawing what you see” instead of “drawing what you think”. Betty Edwards describes this shift very clearly and gives a couple counterintuitive exercises for achieving it. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people got it in an hour.
The result isn’t “drawing very well” (which takes more and different kinds of work), but I’m pretty confident that I can look at anything and make a pencil drawing that looks roughly similar. It doesn’t even matter what! When you “draw what you see”, you no longer care if it’s a person or tree or car or whatever, it’s all just a bunch of shapes in your visual field that you copy to paper.
In singing, there’s a similar concept of “singing with breath support”, which is also a kind of primitive indivisible feeling that good singers have. But as far as I know, nobody has found a description of it that would reliably work on beginners.
Thanks. The “drawing what you see” vs “drawing what you think” distinction combined with the images helped me understand the idea better.
This seems somewhat related to what Scott Alexander called “concept shaped holes.” So you’re saying that some people have a “concept of how to draw what you see” shaped hole, and that Edwards has some techniques of helping you fill that gap.
Are you specifically looking for conceptual shifts that would allow you to do something better? Or is just being able to understand something you previously didn’t understand enough? Like if someone didn’t “get” jazz and there were some way to help them appreciate it, would that count?
It worked on me. The change was surprisingly fast, in a couple days I went from “no drawing talent, stick figures only” to one-minute sketches similar to this or this (not mine, but should give the idea). Getting to this level doesn’t require any technique, it’s purely a conceptual shift. You learn how to trick your mind into “drawing what you see” instead of “drawing what you think”. Betty Edwards describes this shift very clearly and gives a couple counterintuitive exercises for achieving it. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people got it in an hour.
The result isn’t “drawing very well” (which takes more and different kinds of work), but I’m pretty confident that I can look at anything and make a pencil drawing that looks roughly similar. It doesn’t even matter what! When you “draw what you see”, you no longer care if it’s a person or tree or car or whatever, it’s all just a bunch of shapes in your visual field that you copy to paper.
In singing, there’s a similar concept of “singing with breath support”, which is also a kind of primitive indivisible feeling that good singers have. But as far as I know, nobody has found a description of it that would reliably work on beginners.
Thanks. The “drawing what you see” vs “drawing what you think” distinction combined with the images helped me understand the idea better.
This seems somewhat related to what Scott Alexander called “concept shaped holes.” So you’re saying that some people have a “concept of how to draw what you see” shaped hole, and that Edwards has some techniques of helping you fill that gap.
Are you specifically looking for conceptual shifts that would allow you to do something better? Or is just being able to understand something you previously didn’t understand enough? Like if someone didn’t “get” jazz and there were some way to help them appreciate it, would that count?
Specifically looking for conceptual shifts that allow you to do something better.