Author: Karen (20 Articles)

Karen Rester's art comes form the world around her. Karen loves working in collage, acrylic, mixed media and weaving on her loom.

One of the best books I have read that helped improve my mind set about drawing and art is “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. It is “a course in enhancing creativity and artistic confidence” as it says! Over the years, (The edition I have was done in 1999), I have gone thought this book and done the exercises many times. When I hit a point in my work where I feel like it is just not coming together, I will put down what ever tools of art I may be working with, at the moment and pick up my drawing pencil. The 12th Chapter in the book is “The Zen of Drawing: Drawing Out the Artist Within”; This chapter gives an overview of what you have learned in the previous chapters and some excellent thoughts on being an Artist and continuing your journey of learning to draw on the right side of your brain.  “Drawing can reveal much about you to yourself, some facets of you that might be obscured by your verbal self. Your drawings can show you how you see things and feel about things.”  As the great Japanese artist Hokusai said, learning to draw never ends.

This book helps me to make the connections between myself and the art I create. Get a copy and keep it for those times when you think your creativity may be falling away, it will help pick you back up!

The book can be bought on Amazon.com;