There are 2 sides of the brain: the left, a verbal and rational side that deals in numbers and words, and the right, an intuitive side which works with patterns and ‘wholes’. This exercise is meant to engage the thinking strategies of the right side of the brain by drawing ideas rather than verbalising them. I found it quite enjoyable which was surprising as drawing from memory or imagination has never really been my strong point. I was quite pleased that my line drawings from memory, although simple, are reasonable representations of the objects. I do tend to draw quite large so this reduced space but I didn’t have as many ideas working this way anyway. I focussed on the word and the feeling I got from it and drew the things that came forward strongly. I wasn’t really sure how to go about adding materials to the piece but felt I should try to do it without reference material so I used crayons to show the colours that came to mind and some collaged tissue. I wasn’t really happy with the added tissue but the exercise was about generating and recording ideas rather than creating an appealing image.
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After my tutor commented that it would be nice to see this exercise done for other words from the list I chose ‘childhood’ and ‘fashion’ and sketched up some ideas. Although he also mentioned that this should be more smaller images, I find that I naturally draw a little larger working from imagination.
