By: Lia Trocano

I was blessed with a high school art teacher who’s main goal was to instill confidence. One of the exercises he had us do was he passed out paper about 10″ by 16″ that had a grid lightly printed on it with about 2″ squares. He explained each square had a specific purpose and each day we would be shown something to draw in one specific but random square. The only really important thing was to draw in the right square. Some days what we drew in the designated square was just a few swooping lines. Some days it was a tiny bit more detailed. It only took a few minutes each day. At first the filled in squares were scattered but gradually lines began to connect from one to the next. None of it made any sense until one day someone glanced at another students paper and saw that we were creating was a beautiful, though upside down Samurai Warrior. The teacher explained that by feeding it to us in small bits he had removed the opportunity for self judgement or criticism. There are lots of such exercises in the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”.
Another fun thing I did with my grandmother was take a bucket of water and paint brushes outside where we painted pictures on the stucco side of the house. You had to splash it up fast to get the image in your head up there before it evaporated. We laughed and laughed at each others pictures even though a few were surprisingly good!