Betty Edwards: world-renowned educator in the field of artBetty Edwards is the author of the best-selling non-fiction books Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (latest edition: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) and Drawing on the Artist Within, Color and The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook. Her work has reached well over 3 million worldwide. Dr Edwards books are now drawing classics and used as text books in schools and colleges internationally.
The Right Brain Drawing StoryAlthough originally trained as an artist, Betty Edwards became a high school art teacher.The right brain drawing story begins in the late 1960s in a classroom in a Los Angeles high school where art teacher, Betty Edwards, was puzzling over the fact that many of her students struggled to learn to draw. Why could they not draw what was right in front of them when they were progressively learning other skills perfectly well? Another puzzle was that students, who had struggled, suddenly seemed to learn how to draw from one week to the next. When quizzed students could never explain this sudden transformation except to say: "I don’t know – I just see it differently". Frustrated, Betty started exploring what happened when she drew and she found out that:
Picasso Turns the World Upside-down One day Betty Edwards asked her students to copy a drawing of the composer Stravinsky by Picasso and on impulse, she asked them to copy it upside down. To her surprise – and theirs – the results were amazing.When asked why they could copy it so accurately upside-down, the students replied "when it’s upside-down we don’t know what we are drawing". This just added to Betty’s bewilderment. In 1968 Roger W. Sperry published his work on right/left brain hemisphere function, research that was to earn him a Nobel Prize. Sperry suggested that the two sides of the brain had quite specific – and different – functions and that we shift between the two modes of thinking according to what we are doing.
(By the way, I should probably add here that recent research suggests that it is not as clear cut as saying all L-Mode brain characteristics are located on the left side of the brain and vice versa for the right brain characteristics, but for our purposes here it is simpler just to use that distinction.) This was an 'aha' moment for Betty Edwards as the idea of the brain being able to shift to a different way of thinking fitted into what she and her students had experienced. Betty set out to explore the relationship between right and left brain function and drawing. Betty developed her ideas into the doctoral thesis that was later published in 1979 as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The Global Skill of DrawingAfter the book was published, Dr Edwards had another 'aha' moment. She realised that drawing is made up of just five perceptual skills and that these then join together, to form a global skill. What does a global skill mean? Other global skills are reading, driving, learning to ride a bicycle etc. Can you remember how difficult it was learning these skills? But now, I bet you read a newspaper, ride a bike or drive your car without even thinking about it. Learning to draw follows the same process. Just as once you had to learn the alphabet and how a sentence was constructed before you could learn to read… with drawing, if you learn the component perceptual skills of drawing you will be able to draw a perceived object ie. something you can see 'out there'. What are the Perceptual Skills of Drawing?
It Doesn’t Take Long to Learn to Draw Dr Edwards also realised that you can actually learn these perceptual skills pretty quickly – in fact, in as little as five days. Once these skills are learned you simply need to practise them and improve your skills – and of course, master the specific techniques of other media that you might want to try. Dr Edwards developed the 5-day Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain course. The course has been refined and developed over the years by Betty Edwards and her son, Brian Bomeisler. Brian continues the work his mother started and you can find out more about his work here. Dr Edwards’ Work on CreativityDr Edwards’ argues that the right brain’s strengths are undervalued and under-trained in our left-brain oriented culture, with its emphasis on the “3Rs”. She also believes that by training the right brain we can learn to use both sides of the brain more effectively and more efficiently according to their strengths. Dr Edwards’ has presented over five-hundred workshops, seminars and lectures for public schools, art associations, university students, technical and scientific staffs and corporate groups. She has presented seminars in creative problem solving to corporations such as : The Walt Disney Company, Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple Computer Company, IBM, Polaroid, AT&T Bell Labs, American Advertising Associations, Saatchi & Saatchi, GE, American Dental Association, and the American Institute of Architecture. Dr. Edwards is Professor Emeritus, California State University, Long Beach. Although now retired, through her books, workshops and seminars Betty Edwards continues to make a huge impact upon the fields of art education and creative problem-solving. 
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