Know Thyself

Riding on the incredible 'success' of last time, I took another art class in Dutch yesterday. It was based on a book/theory/method called 'Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain'. Knowing how strongly left-brained I am, I thought this would be good for me on two levels. One, I get to practice my Dutch, and two, I can branch out a bit and exercise parts of my brain that generally lie dormant. I wanted to flourish, prosper, expand my horizons and walk out of it a new person (and fully bi-lingual, of course).

What I actually came to learn was this ....... I'm left-brained. That's me. That's who I am. It's what I do. Why am I trying to run away from it, rather than holding my head up high and saying 'Yes, I'm analytical, practical, and proud if it!'? Maybe it's a matter of priorities as well. Art isn't important enough to me to go through the pain of 'brain-expanding'. Dance, I would do it for. Writing? Yeah, probably that, too. Art? No thanks.

There wasn't nearly so much Dutch lesson as I expected because there were three Dutch women there (they didn't need lessons in the language), and one other English woman who was basically fluent anyway. So I more lost in the all-full-speed-Dutch-all-day than I was hoping for. I also found myself getting incredibly frustrated at my (lack of) drawing ability. Ok, I came away with a couple decent examples, but to be honest, when nobody was looking (shhhhh!) I cheated just a little bit. I didn't care at that point. To heck with integrity, I was looking to keep my sanity.

Interestingly enough, I learned that for all my left-brainedness (yeah, it's a word in my world!), the type of art I'm more interested in doing seems to me to be more right-brained. I like blending and blurring colors together to make landscapes, not sitting to draw a perfect hand or flower with a pencil. Chalk is more my medium, not lead. Maybe it's because I think a hand should really look exactly like a hand, or like a painting. Nothing in the middle. Maybe that's where my left-brainedness comes it. I want things perfectly in one extreme or another, not wandering aimlessly around somewhere in the middle.

So here I am, sitting comfortably back in my analytical, practical self. I may have failed in the intended process of yesterday, but I did walk away with knowledge I didn't have before. I'm left-brained, I'm proud of it, and I'm not going to apologize for it anymore. So there.

******************************************************************************

I didn't quite get a chance to finish shading in the background...I was too busy cheating on the fruit picture.















Yup, this is the one I cheated on. A bit more tracing than was meant to happen...which wasn't ANY tracing....meaning I cheated a lot.








Daddy Big Chief was really impressed with the hand picture, but I think it looks like a claw with a sausage for a pinky. Hmmmm, 'horses for courses' and all that, huh?