Quotes from Betty Edwards

Over the last forty years, many educators, decision-makers, and even some parents have come to regard the arts as peripheral, and let's face it, frivolous—especially the visual arts, with their connotation of "the starving artist" and the mistaken concept of necessary talent

As a number of scientists have noted, research on the human brain is complicated by the fact that the brain is struggling to understand itself. This three-pound organ is perhaps the only bit of matter in the universe—at least as far as we know—that is observing itself, wondering about itself, trying to analyze itself, and attempting to gain better control of its own capabilities.

The greatest satisfaction comes from mastering something that is truly difficult.

Albert Einstein put it best: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

I will even go out on a limb and say that we mistakenly may have been putting all our educational eggs into one basket only, while shortchanging other truly valuable capabilities of the human brain, namely perception, intuition, imagination, and creativity. Perhaps Albert Einstein put it best: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

That is like deciding that you shouldn't take a Spanish class because you don't already speak the language.

In order to gain access to the right hemisphere, it is necessary to present the left hemisphere with a task that it will turn down.

Today we are not only testing and grading our children into the ground, but we are not teaching them how to see and understand the deep meaning of what they learn, or to perceive the connectedness of information about the world. It is indeed time to try something different.

The perception of edges (seeing where one thing ends and another starts) The perception of spaces (seeing what lies beside and beyond) The perception of relationships (seeing in perspective and in proportion) The perception of lights and shadows (seeing things in degrees of values) The perception of the gestalt (seeing the whole and its parts)

As your skills increase, you will see your unique style become firm and recognizable. Guard it, nurture it, and cherish it, for your style expresses you. As with the Zen master-archer, the target is yourself.

One of the most encouraging new discoveries that the human brain has made about itself is that it can physically change itself by changing its accustomed ways of thinking, by deliberately exposing itself to new ideas and routines, and by learning new skills.

We mostly see what we have learned to expect to see.

By closing one eye, you removed binocular vision, the slight variance in images, called "binocular disparity," that occurs when we view an object with both eyes open. Binocular vision—sometimes called "depth perception"—allows us to see the world as three-dimensional. When you close one eye, the single image is two-dimensional—that is, it is flat, like a photograph, and therefore can be "copied" onto flat paper.

For the global skill of drawing, the basic component skills, as I have defined them, are: The perception of edges (seeing where one thing ends and another starts) The perception of spaces (seeing what lies beside and beyond) The perception of relationships (seeing in perspective and in proportion) The perception of lights and shadows (seeing things in degrees of values) The perception of the gestalt (seeing the whole and its parts)

The key is always to see the thing-as-it-is in all its unique and marvelous complexity.

Contour drawing, introduced as a teaching method by the revered art teacher Kimon Nicolaides in his 1941 book, The Natural Way to Draw, is still widely used by art teachers.

important key to learning to draw is learning how to set up conditions that allow this mental shift that enables you to see and draw.

As a side benefit, this cognitive shift to a different-from-usual mode of thinking results in a marvelous state of being, a highly focused, singularly attentive, deeply engaging, wordless, timeless, productive, and mentally restorative state.

Al parecer, dibujar un tema percibido requiere principalmente de las funciones visuales perceptivas, no verbales, del hemisferio cerebral derecho, sin intervención del sistema verbal del hemisferio izquierdo. El color y la pintura, por otro lado, requieren esas mismas funciones visuales perceptivas, y además la intervención del hemisferio izquierdo, verbal y secuencial, para obtener los colores mediante mezclas.

Clearly the work of a master teacher who has deep knowledge of his subject and enormous empathy for his students and his readers.

Art has this long history, predating even language, of expressing nonverbal information.