A tribute to Betty Edwards

In 1995 I was lucky enough to take Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain at UC Long Beach from Betty Edwards herself. I had already taken this drawing class from John trees at Pasadena City College and had pretty good drawing skills. Betty's class was actually designed for people who wanted to learn to teach drawing. And I learned to draw so much better!

This chair was a class lesson on negative space. It is a cornerstone of her program, so as a class, we gave Betty a small model chair.

The truly amazing thing about Betty's class was her ability to teach each and every one of us to draw confidently with accuracy. I never did become a "Drawing on the Right Side..." instructor, but I did use a lot of what I learned in my classroom.

Betty was the first to say, drawing is not art. And I loved her comment "The best reason for bad art is: that is the way it looks". I thought of that specifically when I listened to Michael Obermeyer talking about moving objects around in his composition if, in life,  they weren't laid out the way he wanted them. He would move trees in or out of his picture, stretch them to fill space or shrink them out of the way. He would literally move mountains.

Once I learned to draw I really should have kept at it. Looking at my self-portrait now, I see several errors based on what I have learned from Anne Satzyk. Onward.