Dear Fellow Creator,

Many people who doubt the power of art and their own artistic abilities are often floored by what can be accomplished using a drawing method devised by Betty Edwards. But before I introduce her method to you here is a little background.

One of the most important advances in the study of the brain occured in the 60's and 70's when Roger Sperry of the California Institute of Technology led a team of researchers to a new understanding: that the human brain consists of two hemispheres, each of which controls different processes. Since Sperry's findings, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1981, it has become widely accepted that the two sides of the brain have these distintive areas of dominance:

LEFT RIGHT
analytical holistic
logical intuitive
verbal pictorial
sequential simultaneous
temporal spatial

The left side is often viewed as our logical, language and math-oriented side, while the right is seen as the seat of creativity and imagination.

This split-brained research is covered fully in my book: "The Secret Creator Within"- 23 Ways To Awaken Your Creative Genius at http://www.creativepops.com but sufice it to say millions of people have been helped, even if they have never envisioned themselves as creative by understanding and utilizing this knowledge of how our brains really work.

In her book, "Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain", Betty Edwards presents unique methods to teach drawing based on understanding how to shift into "right-brain" mode.

One method is called "upside down drawing" which allows us to stop the left brain from interfering with our ability to relax and release our fingers to draw what we see. By drawing an inverted image our logical left brain gets stuck on recognizing and naming what it sees, so refuses or is unable to translate the information into lines of a picture. Here's how the mehtod works in the words of Edwards:

Familiar things do not look the same when they are upside down. We automatically assign a top and sides to the things we perceive, and we expect to see things oriented in the usual way---that is, right side up. When an image is upside down, the visual clues don't match and the brain becomes ocnfused. We see the shapes, and the areas of light and shadow. We don't particularly object to looking at upside down pictures unless we are called on to name the image. [Then] the task becomes exasperating.

To actually try this excersize, forget everything you have ever learned about art. Take a sheet of paper and a pencil and draw on the facing page weihtout turning the picture right side up. Do not be distracted by trying to right the image in your head; simply concentrate on drawing the lines as you see them. That's right, the LINES. Follow them and conentrate on each, rather than some holistic approach to the figure you're creating. Take your time. Do not turn your sheet of paper or the image around until you are completely finished.

This wil invigorate your inner artistic sense and awaken newfound creative desire and perceptions. Try it and see for yourself!

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Thoughts ON Kindness

In my last newlsetter we discussed conscience as the final door which needs to be opened in order for us to grow in our creativity.

(To read back issues of The Creative Pops Newsletter visit http://www.authorsden.com/victorkpryles and click on "newsletter")

But this week I'd like to introduce an offshoot of devleloping conscience and consiousness: kindness.

Though kindness is a by-product of our work, it is not the only one. Truth, understanding and meaning are the other by-products of a developed consience. Please note they come below, or AFTER consience is nurtured and applied to our lives. They are great things, each in and of themselves.

Try to understand. If you have a developed consience you begin to see the appearance of understanding; when you knowledge meets your being, truth; when the false has a 'taste' of its own, and meaning; when, through the light of our consience, we can SEE the continuity and substance of everything.

Then there is kindness. This is where we must start. It is impossible in our current state to have full blown consience and thus all the attending attributes mentioned. Just remember kindess is never wasted. If it has no effect on the recipient, at least it benefits the bestower. An old French proverb tells us: "write injuries in sand, kindness in marble." And Issac Bashevis Singer once said: "Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life."

So, fellow Creator, go about your day today and be kind. Show what gentleness you have in your self and let it become 'top-of-mind' in your dealings with people. Realize you are doing what you can do, right now, to develop consience in yourself and in the world. Your day will be a beautiful thing when kindness touches it.

How to deliver kindness? A simple, yet warm smile is the universal language of kindness. It is something the deaf can hear and the blind can read in your voice.

You can attmept to understand a person by considering his point of view on things. This is kindness, too. You can forgive a wrong, today. As E.H.hapin said: "Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury."

Yes, kindness is a simple thing.

How often we can be kind to strangers and snub our own family and 'loved ones'. How strange and uncreative a way to live. Yet, by becoming conscious of kindness as a real and substantive CHOICE which we can make, the world takes on a tenderness hard to imagine without it, and opens our mind to pathways that we never could find without it. -VKP

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My newest book is: "Travel Cheap-Travel Well"- Confessions Of A Traveling Pauper. You can read all about it, and find wonderful travel bargains, at: http://www.paupertravel.com

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Are you a gardener? Have you ever wanted to get a jump start on this Spring? Don't think you have the time? Then see: "The Weekend Gardener"- A Busy Persons Guide To A Beautiful Backyard Garden by Victor K. Pryles at
http://creativepops.com/garden.index/index.htm

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Until next time-- have a creative week!

Victor K. Pryles
www.authorsden.com/victorkpryles