You CAN draw and don't you forget it!

Can you use a pen or pencil to write your name? Can you catch a ball from a distance of two metres? Can you thread a needle? If you can, then you can draw. If you can write your name you can hold a drawing impliment and make marks on paper. If you can catch a ball you can judge distances. If you can thread a needle you have the dexterity, accuracy and patience. Those are the skills needed to draw, there are no others. The only other element is practice. You'll need to practice the secret of drawing. Want to know what it is? It has nothing to do with art or talent. It has nothing to do with what you were good at when you were at school.

It is simply to look at the object you are drawing. This is the secret that so many get wrong. In my workshops I've positioned a four-legged chair for people to draw. I positioned it in such a way that they could only see three legs from where they were sitting. But they all drew a chair with four legs because they 'knew' that the chair had four legs. When drawing something, never, ever draw something. Never name it or any part of it. It is not a chair, a car or a person. It is a collection of lines, shapes and shades. Look at it and see and you'll open up your non-verbal right brain and the joy and peace of the moment.

Never mind those logic problems, crosswords and sudukos, drawing is a great work out for the brain and it will enhance your creativity.

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Can you draw? Of course you can!

In my workshops I teach people to draw. Actually I don't teach them at all, I just prove to them that they can draw, it's just them telling themselves they can't that stops them. I received this from one of the delegates:

"After your talk I was thinking about what you'd said, about how the conscious mind can't draw but the unconscious can, and I picked up a notepad and pencil and just sketched what was in front of me (a dressing gown on the door). To my surprise it actually looks like my dressing gown!

"I am writing a book on the unconscious mind, and its role in happiness. I am planning to use music as an example. When you mentioned that drawing was an unconscious activity I immediately realised that the techniques I have developed for allowing the unconscious mind access to the body (e.g. the hands) without conscious "correction" - techniques that have allowed me to play the piano in a few months without tuition - should work just as well for drawing, since both activities are best done by the unconscious. Hence, it was not difficult for me to ask my unconscious mind to draw something, rather than play the piano.

"None-the-less, it was your talk that inspired me to try drawing when I had long-since given up!
Thanks again, and best wishes, Paul Rudman"

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com