Handedness in drawing?
I spent my sixth to my 13th year pretty much doing nothing but drawing horses. You know little girls and horses.
I got so that I could draw them to my satisfaction, but even with such intensive practice, I never managed to iron out a certain imbalance: it was always easier to draw a horse facing left than one facing right.
And now, in adulthood, I find the same thing about drawing human faces in profile. If I’m idly doodling without any thought, my faces will be left-facing most of the time. Given a specific drawing that I want to achieve, the difference is marked: if the subject is facing left, I can sketch it in a few seconds. If right, I make so many false starts that it takes three times as long.
I have no idea why this should be, but I’m interested to know if other people have to overcome more difficulty with one side than the other.
As for ways around it, I’d be tempted to say practice is the answer, but since I have been practising since that young age, maybe it isn’t. And of course, these days we’re fortunate enough to have the ease of flipping an image by means of the computer or a photocopier (and I suppose in the old days we’d have traced it from the other side of the paper) but somehow, none of these methods seem quite proper. An artist should be able to draw from all angles at will.
It’s strange really. I can say quite confidently that any other difficulty, such as representing foreshortened limbs or finding paints to match skintone, really does get easier with practice. But this problem, I feel must be something firmly rooted in the brain.
Today’s task: draw two profiles, one facing each way, then come and comment about which you found easier, if any. I’ll be reading with interest.
Posted: July 30th, 2007 under You, Me, Composition, Drawing people.
Comments: 7
7 Comments
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Yes, me too, both with faces and horses. Interesting! Is it because we write left to right, and draw that way too? For a right-handed artist who starts with the horse’s head, drawing it facing left means that what’s already been drawn isn’t covered by the hand. (Would I find it easier if I’d taught myself to draw horses starting at the tail, or somewhere else, maybe at the legs?) Same for drawing people, assuming you start with the face and do less interesting things like ears and hair afterwards. I’d be interested to hear what it’s like for left-handed artists, for people who read and write a right-to-left language, for people who are both!
I’ve been doing the vase/face exercise in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (chapter 4) while thinking about this. The instructions are for right-handers to draw a right-facing profile first and then copy it in mirror image to make the symmetrical vase, and, unusually, I found the right-facing one easier to draw. The left-facing one was harder and I made a lot of wrong lines. I’m guessing that the first one was easy because I wasn’t trying to make any particular face, or even a very good face, and the second one was harder because I was trying to “get it right” and draw the same shapes I’d already drawn. For the first face there WAS no wrong way.
I think that your theory about being right handed makes a lot of sense. what I wonder though is whether it is possible to overcome with diligent practice. People can write with their left hands, can’t they, when they lose the use of the right one? On the other hand (ha ha…) I know that handedness is meant to be innate and a very difficult thing to repress.
Half my family are left-handed (yes, literally!), though none are especially artistic. I’ll do some research on them.
If this phenomenon is caused by handedness it would probably be possible to become reasonably good at drawing profiles the uncomfortable way around, but even with great effort I’d think it would never get quite as easy as drawing the way that feels more natural.
I found it easier to draw the right facing one than the left. I am right handed too. I wonder if left handed people find the reverse true?
We need to find a left-hander for extensive testing!
Apart from the perfectly plausible brain-related explanations, I don’t see anyone mentioning the possibility of this being somehow related to mechanics and anatomy. For example, I’m sure you’ve all felt that straight lines of certain angles are much harder to draw in comparison to others. This I think has to do with a loosening of the grip you have on the pencil as its tip is moving inwards, underneath your palm. What do you think?
I think that is extremely likely, indeed. Maybe it’s a combination of all of the ideas.