There is a book acclaimed as the ultimate breakthrough in teaching art. It claims that it can help anyone drastically improve their drawing skills, even if they had never had any training in arts whatsoever. We all know what such promises of instant gratification are usually worth, be it “make money quick” schemes or wonder pills that will make you lose thirty pounds without exercise. Yet, the book seems to be no less popular than when it was first published, is in its second edition, and receives ecstatic reviews from the readers — so let’s look at it to determine whether we can make any use of it.

The book in question is Drawing on the right side of the brain by Betty Edwards, now sold in a revised edition as The new Drawing on the right side of the brain. Let’s open it and see.

The author begins with relaying the popular theory about the left and right hemispheres of the brain carrying out different functions, the left one being “logical” and the right one being “creative”.

The author’s concept seems to be that the left hemisphere is limiting the right one, focusing on the logical detail and preventing correct rendition of the scene. The point is illustrated with some home-science experiments like copying the same drawing upright and then upside down, and the ubiquitous double-profile vase illusion. The illustrations do not support the point, unfortunately. The upside-down drawing is indeed about symbolic thinking crippling the image recognition: an untrained person would produce a bad copy in both cases, but the one copied upside down will be somewhat closer to the original because of absence of familiar symbols to fix oneself upon, no matter where in the brain these function are really located. The double profile vase is a demonstration of shifting attention focus, not the supposed left-right duality. The author seems either fascinated with the magic of the word “right” (it’s the right side, see? see?), or thinking that the right-left theory will help persuade people by impressing them with science (in which case she, ironically, does not notice that the theory she uses is remarkably “left-brain”).

If we don’t take the theorizing in account, the author’s point is simply that most people look, but do not see, because they automatically overlay the image with a bunch of symbols that prevent realistic drawing and leave only space for childish doodling. In that the author is, of course, perfectly correct.

But then she proceeds to practice, and things become far less splendid. Essentially, the author tries to base the whole drawing method on “shutting the left brain down”, i.e. drawing without analysing the image, by direct “copying” of the visual field. To that purpose, she even proposes several exercises that are actually taught to beginners in traditional drawing school — for instance, drawing the edges by focusing on the negative space. But, unfortunately, it is not enough to draw the negative space in order to get a good picture. That’s where it quickly begins to get worse.

The problem with Betty Edwards’ method is subtle enough: she indeed proposes exercises that work, and does a great job in persuading the reader that anyone can draw — but she does not seem to ever go past that. The exercises she offers are working ones, and are useful to show people that looking and seeing are not the same thing… but most of the book is dedicated to a few basic exercises and a lot of pseudoscientific talk about an outdated neurophysiological hypothesis. The new edition adds some more exercises, but still dedicates a half of its volume to vacuous theorizing.

The author, it seems, has been caught in her own promise of instant gratification: now that she proclaimed that drawing was easy and required only “shutting down the left brain” and copying what is seen, she can’t suggest that a good deal of drawing is about understanding, not blind copying! So, after the chapters about kitchen neurology, she begins to lose credibility. All the content in the practical chapters can also be found in the first introductory section of any decent academical drawing textbook, only here it is spread thinly over five chapters. There’s also some material on other useful practices like calligraphy — of course, an artist does benefit from a steady hand, but what does it have to do with the “right brain”?

I see it as symptomatic that whenever a decent drawing is found among the book’s illustrations, it is inevitably either by some professional artist or by the author. The students’ drawings provided in the book never rise above mediocre level, essentially refuting the claim of a breakthrough teaching method (that claim being true, the author could certainly have had found two dozen brilliant works by her students to boast of). The example on the right is from the back cover of the new edition. It is easy to see that, though the student was able to learn to actually look at the subject, he made no attempt to think: the drawing is a patchwork of unconnected parts, it is all askew, position on the page notwithstanding. The discrepancy between right and left sides of the face is most striking. The artist never stopped to think and review the model and the drawing, obviously, and never thought to regard the drawing as a whole. What it is, if not a vicious practice which would be very hard to get rid of later?

Even more symptomatic, perhaps, is that in The New edition, the author had to add a telltale section to the chapter about portraiture: a system of geometric measurements intended to verify the proportion of the portrayed face. In a book that hardly ever mentions such things as measurements and proportions, it is most unexpected; it goes contrary to the author’s concept; and it defeats the whole point: the proponent of the “shut the reasoning down” approach resorts to the abhorred logic to save the drawing that is falling apart due to nothing else but the shutdown of logic! It doesn’t even matter that the notion of the left hemisphere being “logic” and the right hemisphere being “creativity” is little but a myth^(*); the author herself put her fault on display to everyone who can see it, undoing her promise with her own hands.

Let’s face it: one cannot develop a wholesome skill by practicing only a part of it. Just as one cannot become a good carpenter by focusing only on driving nails and ignoring all the rest, one cannot become a good artist by concentrating solely on negative space. Drawing is not only about seeing; it is primarily about interpretation and analysis, and it is not sufficient to learn to copy nature in order to attain skill. An artist who learned by this book alone would be helpless the instant he needs to draw anything not present before his eyes, and photographs will not help because using them requires advanced skill in analysis and interpretation. But even without that, there’s only so much success you can hope to achieve as long as you use only half your brain.

The verdict is: the book begins with a few valuable ideas that could provide the initial push that is needed to send you on the road of an artist. It could serve as an impact that makes people try a new thing; and it can be useful for building up confidence. But it teaches little for real, because it promises that it’ll teach you quickly. It does teach quickly — but it does so through teaching precious little even for a beginner level book. Those who only want quick gratification (“Look Ma, I can draw!”) will certainly get it, which is evident from ecstatic testimonials, but they will get little else: they will indeed draw better than before the book, but compared to what’s possible in art that’s not a consolation. Those for whom art is a passion, would do good to seek knowledge elsewhere and not linger at this book which does invite you to open your mind first, but then leaves you indoctrinated with pseudo-neurological junk.

It is sad, but it is certainly not the first instance of snake oil being a smashing success while true teaching masterpieces like textbooks by Andrew Loomis lie forgotten and out of print.