| Drawing on the Artist Within: An Inspirational and Practical Guide to Increasing Your Creative Powers | 
 enlarge | Author: Betty Edwards
Publisher: Fireside
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $0.46
You Save: $16.49 (97%)
New (37) Used (92) Collectible (4) from $0.46
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 74032
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Fireside Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 067163514X
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.35
EAN: 9780671635145
ASIN: 067163514X
Publication Date: April 6, 1987
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read -> Recycle -> Reuse!
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Product Description
AH-HA! I SEE IT NOW!Everyone has experienced that joyful moment when the light flashes on -- the Ah-Ha! of creativity. Creativity. It is the force that drives problem-solving, informs effective decision-making and opens new frontiers for ambition and intelligence. Those who succeed have learned to harness their creative power by keeping that light bulb turned on. Now, Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the million-copy best-seller that proved all people can draw well just as they can read well, has decoded the secrets of the creative process to help you tap your full creative potential and apply that power to everyday problems. How does Betty Edwards do this? Through the power of drawing -- power you can harness to see problems in new ways. Through simple step-by-step exercises that require no special artistic abilities, Betty Edwards will teach you how to take a new point of view, how to look at things from a different perspective, how to see the forest and the trees, in short, how to bring your visual, perceptual brainpower to bear on creative problem-solving. You will learn how the creative process progresses from stage to stage and how to move your own problem-solving through these key steps: * First insight * Saturation * Incubation * Illumination (the Ah-Ha!) * Verification Whether you are a business manager, teacher, writer, technician, or student, you'll find Drawing on the Artist Within the most effective program ever created for tapping your creative powers. Profusely illustrated with hundreds of instructional drawings and the work of master artists, this book is written for people with no previous experience in art.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 It's worth buying for the part on analog drawing September 8, 2004
26 out of 27 found this review helpful
This book is not a substitute for Betty Edwards' basic book on drawing, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This book is about the creative process. So it applies to more than drawing or even visual art.
For me, the part on analog drawing opened up a whole new way to develop my work. I've used it in dream interpretation and personal growth as well as for my artwork. As an artist-blacksmith, analog drawing with sumi brush and India ink has enabled me to express very specific feelings and states of being with bars of iron.
You may find parts of the book unnecessarily complicated. I don't use everything in the book. But it's worth buying for the chapter on analog drawing. If you've ever had any doubts about your ability to express yourself in art, this book can dispel them completely.
 Book is so-so August 27, 2004
6 out of 21 found this review helpful
This book has some good information regarding different styles and techniques for drawing. The author is a little self absorbed throughout the book, and talks about herself and a class she teaches at a college. It goes fairly in depth on the thought process and workings of the brain.
There are sections on drawing different emotions, once again using herself and her students as examples. I wouldn't really suggest that anyone buy or check out this book in a library unless there was absolutely nothing else that related to what they were looking for...that's why I got this book.
 Faith-Healing Testimonials and Pseudo-Science May 20, 2004
15 out of 88 found this review helpful
LEARN-TO-DRAW: UNTHINKING PERSONS APPLY HERE!
Edwards seems intent on obtaining dominance in the field of "How To Draw" books written by those who cannot teach, employing a fashionable Madison Avenue advertising approach to Drawing-On-The-Cash-In-Your-Wallet.
Edwards seems to falsely presume that Michaelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci and other Renaissance Masters all drew upon knowledge regarding the RIGHT-SIDE of their brain, or ZEN, or even YOGA. It's a nonsense proposition, unsupported by fact. Neither were such "masters" of drawing, interested in selling HOW-TO-DRAW books.
One could examine infinitely the theme of an "Artist Within," a creative self within, or even a Divine Spark within. I myself endorse SPIRITUALITY with whole-hearted enthusiasm. The problem is, it just doesn't matter whether the artist is within/without, internal/external, left-brain/right brain, or just plain WRONG-HEADED; because it amounts to nothing more than coy marketing where Betty Edwards is concerned.
Betty Edwards engages in gross self-promotion, prevailing upon public sentiment to hold forth as art expert, Zen Buddhist, scientist, college professor, and New Age mystic guru.
Authors like Edwards are using two prominent FALLACIES, to lead readers on with promises of artistic empowerment:
(1) The WHOLENESS or WELLNESS FALLACY: which suggests that if I am HEALED, or WHOLE (in a psychological sense) I will be powerful, and produce powerful art.
(2) The KNOW-IT-ALL FALLACY: which suggests that if I KNOW EVERYTHING, such as is suggested by invocations of QUANTUM THEORY, or reading quotes from scientists, writers, poets, philosophers and adopting Eastern Religions such as Yoga and Zen (on a very superficial level) I will embrace a THEORY-OF-EVERYTHING, and as a consequence, I will be powerful, and produce powerful art.
Edwards twists and bends all knowledge into a gooey mass of rhetorical gibberish. Edwards cannot discern the difference between "WITHIN" or "THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN".
By any stretch of definition, they cannot be the SAME THING at the SAME TIME.
The implication is clear; Edwards believes art is conditional upon maintaining an intellectual act, in short, a KNOW-IT-ALL act, inclusive of Zen Buddhism, New Age Cosmology, Nuclear Physics, Evolutionary Theory, Neurology, and Philosophy. [Just like Gary Zukav]; or, alternatively, it is a WELLNESS act, suggesting that we adopt a qasi-religious philosophy, identifing with a HIGHER SELF that is WITHIN. Whereas that latter statement sounds profoundly true, there is a problem. How can you both tell people that they are "Drawing on the artist within" and also tell them that the "artist" [HIGHER SELF] is "on the right side of the brain"? This is where Edward's ideas come into clear contradiction.
It is clear that those who recommend Edward's books, do not evidence a predominance of Left-Brain analytical functioning, with objective analysis. These are not "great thinkers" and yet Edwards claims require deep analysis. She is very wordy and heavy on text and ideology. It is virtually impossible to credit those who affirm Edward's theories, with an ability to use RIGHT-BRAIN functioning to visualize the OBVERSE/NEGATIVE SPACE, and at the same time actively use LEFT-BRAIN ANALYTICAL FUNCTIONING to analyze or comprehend Edward's outer-galactic star cluster of disconnected theories. Go figure!
Morever, Edwards cannot distinguish between the fundamentally contradictory reasoning inherent to METAPHYSICAL REALISM [the Platonic WORDS-ARE-REAL] as opposed to: METAPHYSICAL NOMINALISM [WORDS-ARE-NOTHING]; but Edwards is just preaching to the choir anyway. Who's kidding who?
This is an overly complex approach, but worse, it is an absolute contradiction in logic; but Edwards manages to both affirm the rational, the scientific, and the non-rational and metaphysical at the same time. Her scientists are "magicians" and perform "magic". Her magicians are scientists who expound profound core theories of physics. Knowledge of both or either of these make you an artist?
Betty Edwards, by introducing personal metaphysics into teaching drawing, is essentially dictating to students, that they must accept the philosophical and pseudo-scientific ideology, before they can even begin to learn to draw.
Betty Edwards teaches that THERE ARE THOSE WHO CANNOT DRAW-BUT CAN DRAW- CANNOT DRAW -- BUT CAN DRAW -- CANNOT DRAW-- BUT CAN DRAW ....and having taught this fundamental contradiction in reason, has found an army of ideological "lemmings" who repeat the propaganda slogan as though it were a fundamental, logical, rational, medical diagnosis, a philosophical, and psychological fact.
It's analogous to somebody WALKING down the street with you, and saying, "I CANNOT WALK! I CANNOT WALK!" and of course, you point out to them, "Hey, but you ARE walking!" and they respond, "No, you do not understand, I CANNOT WALK!" Whereupon you insist, "But you ARE walking! So you CAN walk, after all!" and they respond,
"Yes, of course I'm walking, but only because Betty Edwards taught me how to walk within the NEGATIVE SPACE around my feet!That's why!"
It reminds one of the PARADOX OF EPIMENIDES:
"All Greeks are Liars! --by Epimenides, a Greek
Edwards has a following, that much is evident; but merely because a mass of people claim a thing is so, does not make it so. [The Populist Fallacy ] The contradictions and paradoxes do not sum up to simple truth.
An analogy might be like declaring:
EVERYTHING IS TRUE. IF ANYONE SAYS OTHERWISE, IT'S FALSE!
Edwards pulls this off very neatly. You are to both DRAW ON THE ARTIST 'WITHIN' and also DRAW ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN, at the same time. Both are true, and nothing is false.
Scientists are metaphysicians, and metaphysicians are scientists.
The ultimate irrationality however, is the suggestion that those who "draw", by Edward's miraculous methodologies, are "artists". If you subscribe to Edward's theory, you are drawing on the "ARTIST WITHIN". Isn't that nice? So, if everyone is an "ARTIST" by virtue of the existence of the "ARTIST WITHIN" how do we distinguish between someone who IS and IS-NOT an artist? You cannot. That is the marvelous slight-of-hand that Edwards is pulling off on the general public. Both or either YOU and BETTY EDWARDS and MICHAELANGELO.....are ONE, and not only, but you are "in ZEN" too!
It's a laughable proposition at best.
NO WONDER TTHIS BOOK IS SO CHEAP [] August 11, 2003
10 out of 77 found this review helpful
MANY OF THESE BOOKS ARE FOR SALE AND I SEE WHY. IT WAS A HORRIBLE BOOK FOR ANY ARTIST OR FOR SOMEONE TO LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT BEING CREATIVE! HOW DID IT GET PUBLISHED?? TERRIBLE SILLY THINGS WRITTEN DOWN ABOUT MUCH OF NOTHING....DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME PLEASE..
IF YOU FIND THIS BOOK HELPFUL, YOU MUST NOT BE AN ARTIST! August 11, 2003
1 out of 29 found this review helpful
NOT ONLY DOES THIS BOOK OVERLAP, I FOUND IT INSULTING TO READ! I WAS SO BORED OF THE DRAWINGS AND OVER AND OVER EXPLANATIONS OF THEM THAT I COULDN'T FINISH THE BOOK. THAT WAS TOO MUCH REALLY!! NO THEORY OR ANY BREAKTHROUGH KNOWLEDGE WHAT SO EVER.
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