More Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Another exercise is to draw your hand without looking at your paper. Just get lost in the shapes and let your hand draw what you see. Below is my first try. I got pretty lost. The exercise was five minutes. I used a timer. But I was already done after 3 minutes, but I had to keep going. So I kept drawing, but on a new section of hand. You can see where I lost or changed focus.
I took another try, this time vowing to keep going the whole time and stay focused. I did, but still got lost. Or at least, I lost the scale. I stayed with the outline, but the outline blew up like a balloon.
The last couple of times, I kind of got a better sense of space, stayed with the contours without getting too far away from the actual shape. There’s still a lot of weird empty unfinished fingers, but you can imagine where it should be. Some of them look like plump worms.
B.S. Donovan 
Love this book.
The number one principle I gained from this is the importance of truly “seeing” what you look at. It is definitely important for shodo, because you often *think* you’re writing something he way your teacher is, but it looks wonky. And it’s because you’re not really seeing what you’re trying to draw/write. Same thing for stuff like kung fu, learning to actually see what someone is doing when they’re showing you a technique or form is so important.
Sorry for ramble – I’ll see myself out.
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Totally with you on this. I love rediscovering these things. You draw comics too, don’t you?
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Used to. Used to be gunning to be an artist. But had no idea how to make it all work, and time restrictions meant I had to choose between it and other stuff.
I really do wanna go back to it one day. If only I didn’t have to work…
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Love the concept. Pretty sure I’m never going to get near the talent to do it. It’s pretty good that you did it and you’re willing to share the results.
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One point in the book is that everyone has the talent, and can learn to draw. You just need to suppress the left brain literal side.
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