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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!
Related Post: Top 10 Art Supplies for Young Artists
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:
And here is mine:
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:
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
A Proportion Finder and An Angle Finder
One set per student – These are really important to this method of drawing.
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!
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Debbie J says
This sounds like a great program for summer enrichment! So many of my students feel that they don’t have an artistic talent. This impacts their confidence when doing a project or even drawing a scenario for a word problem. I love how this would boost their confidence and open up new areas of talent for them to explore.
Myra says
That sounds fantastic, Debbie! I hope it goes great for your students!
Laura Decker says
Hi Myra! I’m so thankful for your blog post. My homeschooling group is also looking to use Drawing the the Right Side of the Brain as our art curriculum. I am curious, which exercises did your group decide to use during your 6 weeks?
Thank you!
Laura
Myra says
Goodness, it’s been so many years ago. I don’t remember which exercises we used. My daughter remembers doing self-portraits with mirrors, drawing objects you see, drawing your hand while looking at it and without looking at it, drawing something upside-down, and maybe others, but that’s what she remembers. Good luck with your class!