Thanks for being the first person to submit a question!
It turns people who have “no drawing talent” into people who can easily draw anything they see, not by strenuous exercise, but by a conceptual shift that can be achieved in a few hours.
Did that work for you, or do you know of any evidence that that’s the case? I’m skeptical that a few hours can allow anyone to “draw anything they see” but would be happy to change my mind on that. I guess you didn’t say how well they’d be able to draw after just a few hours of “conceptual shift.” But I read you as saying anyone can draw very well after just a little effort.
I guess I’m not really understanding the question. Is the question something like:
”What are some small shifts people can make in their mental model of some skill that would have a very large impact in the skill level of the person making that mental shift?”
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?
Thanks for being the first person to submit a question!
Did that work for you, or do you know of any evidence that that’s the case? I’m skeptical that a few hours can allow anyone to “draw anything they see” but would be happy to change my mind on that. I guess you didn’t say how well they’d be able to draw after just a few hours of “conceptual shift.” But I read you as saying anyone can draw very well after just a little effort.
I guess I’m not really understanding the question. Is the question something like:
”What are some small shifts people can make in their mental model of some skill that would have a very large impact in the skill level of the person making that mental shift?”
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.