While the theories that underlie this book are dubious, the book exercises work, and you will learn to draw in a natural way. This is a book I go back to regularly when I want to improve my sketching or drawing skill. Drawing, like music, and language unlocks a whole new world to your life. ( )

I can't write anything about this book that doesn't sound like an exaggeration. It literally changed my life and the way I think.

Like many others, I thought 'being artistic' was a personality trait. Either you had it, or you didn't. 'Artistic' people could quickly draw some lines on a paper and make it into something beautiful. Or they could take a few objects and arrange them in a way that would make you say 'yes, this is really nice'. Or do a slew of other amazing things that I couldn't. Clearly I wasn't artsy and I understood that from early childhood and accepted it.

The author noticed many people feel the same way and she was able to (accurately) trace it back to some time around the age of 10. Prior to that, everyone basically draws the same way: stick figures and circles etc. Everyone also loves art. But then, suddenly, some children are able to accurately draw what their eyes see, and some aren't. That is, if asked to draw an apple, some 10-year-olds will draw a circle with a line sticking out, and others will draw a complex object that anyone would recognize as an apple. Those of us who weren't able to draw the complex object deemed ourselves to be un-artistic and still draw a circle with a line in it, assuming that is as far as that skill will ever grow.

Simply, this book gives you that missing art lesson you should have gotten right when you felt that way. How do you go from the circle with a line in it to an actual apple? As an analytical-minded person, what should you do? She teaches you that specific skill in a really straightforward way.

Now, the part that changed my life: after this book, I started drawing and kept it up for several months. I drew some amazing things that I was actually really proud of (still am). I didn't go on to become a professional artist or anything, but I understood that the art world isn't something inaccessible to me. It turns out you can have an analytical mind and use it for art. You can learn art. You can improve on it. You can understand it. You can explore it. This book took art from "something I can never do, and, at best, admire from afar" to "something I absolutely can do, and something I can be really good at if I want to put in the practice"

5 stars :) ( )

One of the essential reasons why neuroscience is, and probably will remain for a long time, at a stage of infancy has to do the so-called scientific approaches used to understand the workings of the brain. Its main pillars are, risibly, correlation and mapping. Rather than attempt to understand the processes at hand, which requires the thinking capacity of an Einstein in grasping an unknown phenomenon (see relativity theory), neurologues spend most of their time guessing or identifying areas of activity, thanks to the limited tools at their disposal which are statistics and brain scans.

The problem at hand may be better understood by use of analogies. Statistical correlation may lead to silly conclusions such as "men in uniforms carrying weapons are more likely to be the cause of wartime casualties" and will completely bypass the notion that wars are decided by men sitting at their desks in government offices.

The operative keywords, when it comes to setting up statistical experiments involving brain activity, are plasticity and dynamics. These are influenced by age, social upbringing, environment, hormonal chemistry, and many more. Studying active brain centers in a group of given age does in no way guarantee identical responses in the same group 40 years down the road. Some people start their active life as accountants and turn to painting after retiring. Most statistics are therefore the result of guesswork, because the rationale about an experiment may be flawed and will probably be frozen in time, resulting in static vs. dynamic analysis.

As to brain scans, they focus on the where, rather than the-what and how, which teaches us nothing of interest. Someone might know that cooking usually takes place in a kitchen but, based on that information alone, will remain ignorant as to the process of cooking itself.

Pointing at areas of the brain showing particular activity during an experiment is no better. The studied group, or individual, may and probably will respond differently to changing circumstances. Being able to localise activity, as useless as it may be, will also constitute highly unreliable information. Will the same person respond identically and uniformly under stress, after getting out of bed, while in love, or after a one-month vacation in the Amazons?

Neuroscience cannot rely on such mickey-mouse tools and methods to progress beyond guesswork. It requires fundamental research as a starting point and later experimentation to confirm theories. Deriving theory from experimentation is foreign to science and quite primitive, which probably goes a long way in explaining why we know so little about the brain.

Can we explain the visual/spatial learning (picture thinking), which certain members of the human species exhibit, over the norm of word thinking? True, the brain functions as an integrated whole, however, the evidence for these two modes of thinking within humans is well documented. And the first functions primarily out of the right brain while the other operates primarily out of the left brain. The distinction of these two modes is so profound that as a stuffed llama, and therefore outside your paradigm, I might conclude that this phenomena actually represents the existence of two species of humans on Earth -- alike in every detail except their primary mechanism of survival. The picture thinkers see the integrated whole of existence and what needs doing while the word thinkers are primarily focused on football teams.

I find it amazing that we "brains" think we can understand "the brain". I think of it as sort of like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle- that the very act of observation changes the observed. All qualities of our personalities reduced to patches of lit up areas in a clot of neurons.... Known only by observations made by other clots of neutrons. It beggars the very idea of objectivity- it's an endless loop into subjectivity. Dangerous when being used to somehow define our very humanity. ( )

An outdated drawing book from the 20th century. The neuroscience knowledge is largely trashy false science (maybe they thought that it's true in the last century). And what's horrible is that there are many stereotypes about learning that is absolutely a taboo at this minute (e.g. female is feminine, male is masculine, language means anaytical while visual means emotional, etc). But the basic drawing techniques is still timely.

Highly not recommended. ( )

This book is very informational to those who love to draw, would love to learn to draw better or just learn to draw period. I really like to draw and I am an okay drawer if I say so myself but I can be better, and I really liked the book because I learned a lot about how the brain works when it comes to drawing and how to do it better. The authur has a tendacy of ranting and draging his point on a little to much but well written. ( )