In August 1996, Dilip Mukerjea flew to the United States to spend five gruelling days - he had to constantly battle with & work relentlessly to outbeat his rational, logically driven left brain [like me, Dilip had been trained as an engineer] - in order to go back to the basics of "learning to draw & drawing to learn".
The counterpoint to his focused pursuit in the United States during that period was that, Dilip had already excelled in mind-mapping, but he wanted to expand his artistic virtuosity.
To his eventual surprise, he finally managed to conclude his hard-earned lessons successfully with the art maestro Dr Betty Edwards, with flying colours of course, as you can witness the exuberance of all the graduates, including himself, as captured in the foregoing snapshot.
[The lady in white, standing in the middle row, is Dr Betty Edwards. The moustached guy clowning around while lying on the floor is you-know-who.]
Most importantly, he realised that the practice of drawing what he sees in the environment actually heightens his own power of observation of the world at large. WOW!
By the way, Dr Betty Edwards is also author of the classic, 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain'.
Dilip has in fact dedicated an entire section, entitled 'Learning to Draw, Drawing to Learn' (page 309 to 322), on what he had absorbed from her in his wonderful book, 'Surfing the Intellect: Building Intellectual Capital for a Knowledge Economy'.
I like to end his post with a beautiful quote from Dr Betty Edwards:
"Be clear in your mind why learning to draw well is important. Drawing enables you to see in that special, epiphanous way that artists see, no matter what style you use to express your special insight, Your goal in drawing should be to encounter the reality of experience... to see ever more clearly, ever more deeply.
True, you may sharpen your aesthetic sensibilities in ways other than drawing, such as meditation, reading, or travel. But it's my belief that for an artist these other ways are chancier and less efficient. As an artist you will be most likely to use visual means of expression, and drawing sharpens the visual senses."
[Interested readers in acquiring the skills of "Learning to Draw & Drawing to Learn": Please get in touch with Dilip Mukerjea via his email: dilipmukerjea@gmail.com.
He is fully licensed to share & facilitate Dr Betty Edwards' methodology in this part of the world.]
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