Nature Study and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by HollyAnne Dobbins

A number of years ago, an artist-friend of mine recommended Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain to make me feel less anxious about drawing. I perused the book but soon set it aside in favor of other reading. Then, this year the Nature Study workshop at the ChildLight USA conference that Mom and I teach was all a-buzz with talk of Betty Edwards’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Several conference attendees asked me what I thought of the book, especially as it connects to nature study. Curious, I ordered a copy of the book and started reading.

Edwards’s thesis is simple: “Ability to draw depends on ability to see the way an artist sees . . . . most people never learn to see well enough to draw” (Edwards, 2). Therefore, if they can learn to see, they will be able to draw. So, how does one learn to see? Edwards insists the secret is in learning about the brain and, specifically, the functions of the right side of the brain (Edwards, 26). “R-mode,” referring to the use of the right side of the brain, “is the ‘left-handed,’ right-hemisphere mode. The R is curvy, flexible, more playful in its unexpected twists and turns, more complex, diagonal, fanciful.” This is all in contrast to the “foursquare, upright, sensible, direct, true, hard-edged, unfanciful, forceful” left hemisphere of the brain (Edwards, 38). Put simply, the left side of the brain is word-oriented while the right side is picture-oriented.

The challenge to the art student is that the left brain tends to be dominant. Therefore, Edwards lays out suggestions for “tricking” the left side, the verbal side, of the brain into rejecting a task so that the right brain is forced to take over. The most common technique used to do this is to turn the picture one wishes to draw upside down. When the image is inverted, the left side of the brain cannot name the parts of the picture, gets frustrated, and passes the task of deciphering it to the right brain (Edwards, 42, 50, 100). Because the right brain sees things in shapes, line, and space, it doesn’t matter if the image “makes sense” in the way defined by the word-oriented left brain. The right brain enjoys the challenge of mysterious detail (Edwards, 46, 101).

Edwards guides students through a lengthy series of exercises that explain and demonstrate line, space, and color. “Modified contour drawing” focuses on the detail of the subject by keeping the eyes in nearly constant motion between the model and the drawing. Before drawing, the students spend several moments studying their subject and begin to take in and admire the details. This helps them focus the right side of their brains and turn off the chatter of the left side (Edwards, 90). The students then begin to slowly move their eyes along every detail of the lines and curves of the subject while simultaneously capturing them with their pencils. They continue this careful observation and drawing across the whole of their subject, paying careful attention to the space between each curve and line as well as the shape of the negative space around the object (Edwards, 90-91). Just as the right side of the brain specializes in seeing relationships between lines and shapes, it is also skilled at seeing relationships between colors and subtle changes in color. Furthermore, the right brain can analyze a color to see what colors were used to make it (Edwards 206).

When I began reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I was looking for ways to improve the way we teach nature study. Instead, I found that right brain psychology explains why nature study works. Increased access to the right side of the brain enables students of all ages and levels of artistic experience to admire and capture with detailed watercolor the beauty of God’s creation. Without even knowing it, we encourage students to use the right side of their brain through the one-minute observation and through continued observation while painting.

Edwards made it clear that the dominant left side of the brain struggles to quiet down and allow the right side of the brain to work. The left side of the brain prefers to use symbolism to draw (ie: a tree looks like a stick with a cotton ball on top) rather than to take the time to truly see things as they are (Edwards, xiv, 42), “‘But I can’t stop thinking; I can’t make my mind sit down!’ Poor little girl. . . . Set the child to definite work by all means, and give [her] something to grind. But, pray, let [her] work with things and not with signs—the things of Nature in their own places, meadow and hedgerow, woods and shore” (Mason, 55-56). Charlotte Mason’s “poor little girl” sounds much like a child whose left brain is stuck in a system of symbols and struggles to take interest in the details of life around her. Nature study breaks this pattern of thought and draws the attention of the mind to the vein patterns of a caladium leaf or the intricate coloring of a pansy. It awakens not only the curiosity of the right brain but also, and more importantly, the curiosity of the child.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and nature study seem very different because Edwards focuses on drawing people while nature study focuses on watercolors of nature. However, they use the exact same skill—making use of the right brain through the habit of observation. There are several benefits to reap from both methods of right brain learning.

Careful observation enhances the student’s brain by increasing neural pathways. First, observation vastly increases knowledge about the subject being studied. It is only through looking that students will realize red maple leaves typically have three large points, two small points, and jagged edges. Observation also trains the mind to pay attention to and realize the importance of details. Children typically draw horses with straight, square legs. As they look closer, however, they will see that the legs have curves that form the joints and muscles. If horses truly had straight, square legs they would not be able to walk, much less run. In the classroom, students who have practiced attention to detail will absorb more material and be more likely to faithfully follow complex instructions.

The habit of observation also enhances a student’s sense of wonder and beauty. “I don’t think I ever actually looked at anyone’s face before I started drawing,” one of Edwards’s students remarked, “Now, the oddest thing is that everyone looks beautiful to me” (Edwards, 8). Charlotte Mason readily supports such a reflection. “‘The aesthetic sense of the beautiful,’ says Dr. Carpenter, ‘of the sublime, of the harmonious, seems in its most elementary form to connect itself immediately with the Perceptions which arise out of the contact of our minds with external Nature’” (Mason, 68).  The right brain and nature study enable students to see God’s artistry with open eyes.

Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Putnam Publishing
Group: New York. 1989.
Mason, Charlotte M. Home Education. JM Dent and Sons Ltd: London. 1954.

© HollyAnne Dobbins 2010

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From My Side of the Atlantic by Dr. John Thorley

The launch of the Charlotte Mason Digital Archive at Redeemer University College in Toronto early in October was a fascinating event. Thanks first of all to Dr. Deani Van Pelt, Marlene Power and all those who made the conference such a success. I have already been using the online images of the archive here in my study in Milnthorpe, because it is quicker and easier than making the 30 minute trip to Ambleside, or even to finding my own digital copies of selected documents on my own computer – and the quality of the images is much better than my digital photographs. Thanks to Deani and Marlene and their team for this marvellous resource.

Since the Redeemer Conference I have spoken to two groups about Charlotte Mason. One was the Ambleside Local History Society. In the question session that followed my talk one fairly elderly lady said that she had attended the Practice School attached to the College in the 1930s, and gave us a brief but graphic first-hand account of the nature study, the narration, the broad curriculum, and several other aspects of Charlotte Mason education that I had just been talking about. A week later I spoke to the annual conference of the Cumbria Family History Society, where I concentrated on the work that Margaret Coombs has done on Charlotte’s family and early history. In the audience there was a man from the still quite strong Quaker community in South Cumbria who told us that his own family had links with the very area that Charlotte’s father came from in south-east Ireland, and he was able to confirm that the name Mason was indeed quite common amongst the Quaker families there. All this made me very much aware that there is a surprising amount of information out there in the community; it’s a matter of knowing who to ask.
I was talking the other day, at the half-term holiday, to our grandson Joel, who moved into secondary school in September. ‘Ten times better than primary school,’ Joel insisted. ‘Why?’ he went on. ‘Because we don’t spend all the time practising for those awful SATs tests.’ Now let me stress that I don’t blame the primary school; all primary schools throughout the country do the same. The last year in primary school is devoted largely to getting children through the SATs tests in Maths, English and Science, because the national ‘League Tables’ are based entirely on the results of these tests. Joel is fascinated by History and Geography, and he is quite musical, but he had done nothing of any of these for the last year and a half of the primary school. Now he gets his History, Geography, Music (he is learning to play the guitar), and many other things, and from Joel’s enthusiasm they appear to be well taught, with an emphasis on getting out and about to look at things and finding things out for themselves, all within a structured and caring environment that stresses friendship and helping one another. Joel goes to a Roman Catholic comprehensive school in Liverpool, but I don’t think Charlotte Mason would have criticised much of what goes on there – well, not in Joel’s class anyway.

In fact the debate about ‘those awful SATs tests’ continues unabated over here. The government is coming under increasing pressure to revise the whole system. It has been totally abandoned in Wales, and abandoned at the age of 14 and much altered at the age of 7 in England. Even our government inspectors are now saying that the SATs at 11 seriously restrict the curriculum in most primary schools. This year many heads of schools flatly refused to do them – and because our state schools now have a fair degree of independence, the government discovered that there was not much it could do about it. The SATs are on the way out, though it may take a year or two yet. Charlotte would have been pleased, because this system has had a similar deleterious effect on the primary school curriculum to that caused by the ‘Payment by Results’ system that Charlotte herself detested in the 1860s and 1870s.

Our government over here is keen to introduce ‘free schools’, to be called ‘Academies’ and to be set up by parents’ groups, commercial companies, or whoever wants to set up a school. These schools will have full government funding, but will be free from many of the regulations (including the National Curriculum and probably some aspects of government inspection) that apply to ordinary state schools. The schools will be based on the American model of Charter Schools. But of course over here the motivation to set up a ‘free school’ will not primarily be concerned with the teaching of religion as many in the US are, since that is already built into the state school system (as I mentioned above, our grandchildren go to a Roman Catholic school, which is fully state funded). The concern that many people have (including me) is that these free schools will be set up in more affluent areas to cream off the more able and socially advantaged children, with full government funding. In fact the regulations for free schools do say that children cannot be selected for entry on academic grounds; but the name, location and curriculum of the school can select just as easily – ‘The Lawns Classical Academy’ is likely to turn into a selective ‘grammar school’ before you can say ‘Charlotte Mason’.

© John Thorley 2010

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