drawing on the right side of the brain before and after

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Looking for an awesome way to teach drawing to your kids or your students? A few years ago we used "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" for a class in our homeschool co-op and we loved it. I'd like to review it and share about our experience with it.

I had never heard of this program before then, so I was a student right along with the kids.

Oh, my goodness… was it ever fantastic.

***This is an honest-to-goodness unbiased review of "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". I am not being sponsored or paid to review this product. I'm simply sharing with you the great experience we had with it in hopes to be of some help.***

How we used Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

While "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" is a broad drawing curriculum, our co-op art unit was only 6 weeks long. So we had to pick and choose which lessons we wanted to focus on during our time.

A parent/teacher could choose to teach the lessons themselves or use the videos that the author made to go along with her course.

The author, Betty Edwards, has made a series of videos of her teaching each lesson. She has them available to stream from her site, as well as an option to purchase them on a DVD.

We chose to use the DVD version, and boy, am I glad we let her teach the lessons for us. (We chose the DVD version because we were in a location where the internet was temperamental, and we were also able to share the DVD when needed.)

I was so impressed with the simple yet powerful instruction from the DVD. In reality, my co-mentor and I didn't teach the class, Betty Edwards taught the class through her excellent video instruction, and we just helped facilitate the student's practicing in class. (Nice!)

Even though our drawing unit was only 6 weeks long, I was amazed to see the growth of each of the kids in our class. Each one of them improved, and the best thing was, they each KNEW they had improved!

Our "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" before and after drawings:

Ok, here you have it. I'll share my and my kids before and after self-portrait drawings to show that the examples given on their website and in their book are real.

Here is my then 15-year-old son's before and after self-portrait drawings of himself:

15 year old son's before and after drawings with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

And here is mine:

My before and after drawings with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

We couldn't find my then 9-year-old daughter's before and after self-portrait drawing, but here are a couple of her other drawings that were done during this class:

9 year old's drawings with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

I have to say that we did pretty darn good! And this was only after 6 weeks of the course! I wonder if we had done the full course what we would have been able to accomplish.

It was also great to see the boost it gave my 15-year-old son who had no desire to learn to draw. It helped him see that he has some talent in an area he never had an interest in exploring. It gave him a boost of confidence that he's more capable and awesome than maybe he thought he was. 🙂

My daughter has always loved to draw, and we still saw great improvement in her skills with this class.

Teacher preparation

There is quite a bit of preparation on the teacher's part to prepare for the class. You would need to get familiar with how the course runs, as well as get familiar with all of the supplies you would need to purchase for each student – there's quite a bit.

So if you have time to have your students go through the whole curriculum, then great. But if you're like us where your time is limited, it will take some work on your part to go through and pick out which lessons you feel would be the best for your students to do,

If you're an artist you could teach the material without getting the DVD, but I would recommend you check it out to see what you think about it. I thought it was quite excellent. Some libraries have a copy of the DVD that you could check out to see what you think of it.

The list of supplies we purchased:

We bought one DVD to be watched in class:

"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" workbook

One for each student

Dixon Ticonderoga Pencils

A couple of pencils per student

White Printer Paper

Several sheets of paper per student for them to do some of their drawings on

Staedtler Mars Plastic Erasers

One per student

Pencil Sharpener

One per student

4B Medium Graphite Stick

One per student

Vis-a-Vis Projection Marker, black

One per student

Handheld mirror, square shape

One per student. Since we had a large group of students, we didn't have enough mirrors in the building in which we met for each student to do their self-portraits. So, we got them each a handheld mirror and used artist tape (below) to tape the mirrors to the walls around the room. Be careful though, some students didn't use enough tape, or didn't secure them well enough to the wall, and some fell off and broke on the floor.

Artist Tape

We bought just one roll and gave each student a portion of it to tape their hand-held mirror to the wall for the self-portrait exercise. If you have your students use hand-held mirrors, be sure to use plenty of tape. We had some mirrors fall off the wall and break.

Sketch Pad Board 15″ x 16″

One per student

These are super helpful. They give your student the ability to draw on a level surface at the angle they want, and it has a clip on one edge to hold their work still. Plus a huge rubber band to hold the bottom of their sketch pad still.

This link is for an online art store called DickBlick.com. Amazon has these sketch pads but they are more expensive.

Strathmore Drawing Pad 9″ x 12″

One per student

Graphite Pencil

One per student

Kneaded Rubber Erasers

One per student

Plastic Accordion File Folder

One per student – For them to keep all of their supplies in

Better Office Products 7 Pocket Expanding File, Letter Size, Assorted Colors, 2 Count

A Proportion Finder and An Angle Finder

One set per student – These are really important to this method of drawing.

ST01 (3).JPG

Conclusion

So honestly, if your child(ren) or students want to learn to draw and you may or may not have an artistic bone in your body, you could simply facilitate their learning by providing the supplies for them, let the great instructor do the teaching through her videos, and assist them in their efforts.

And if you do have an artistic bone or two in your body, you can decide if you want to teach the lessons yourself or use the videos.

It's a fun course! We're super glad we did it. We look back on that time and remember it fondly, and feel good about our efforts and our growth. So yes, I would highly recommend "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain."

Have you taught drawing to kids before? I'd love to hear about your experience!

Myra Johnson author of A Heart Full of Joy

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