know | Outside The Lines

Being an artist also means having a deep connection with the world around you, viewing life with a different set of lenses. To an artist, creativity and beauty encompasses just about every facet of daily life. The amount of individual interests available to an artist are limitless.

Like many artists, Leonardo da Vinci didn’t just consider himself to be a man of one concentration. One fascination of Leonardo’s was that of invention and design.

Throughout his life, Leonardo had taken time to document ideas for inventions that intrigued and inspired him. He did this by sketching them in his journal. However, the ability to create prototypes and test each of these inventions went unrealized in his life. Unfortunately, Leonardo died before any of the world would know of his true genius. His works were scattered and lost, many of them not seen again for hundreds of years.

In the example above, taken from the Museum of Sciences website, we can see that Leonardo da Vinci had a vision for a flying vehicle nearly 500 years before the first manned aircraft would be designed and piloted by Paul Cornu in 1907.

In his drawings, it is easy to see Leonardo’s dead on grasp of where the future of technology was headed. From tanks and parachutes, to diving and aircraft landing gears, Leonardo would touch upon them all in his pen and paper interpretations.

Was it because he was a supremely intelligent and enlightened human being, or that he had visions of a future far superior to our own? In any case we may never know, but it was likely a pairing of the two that lead him to jot down so many innovative and profound ideas.

It is startling to note how severely under noticed the conceptions went until the incredible discovery of some of Leonardo’s works; drawings that would captivate the imaginations of so many throughout the world.

It is a lesson to us that an artist is more than artist, he is an instrument in the progression of the world and its many views.

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A Definitive Guide to Leonardo da Vinci’s Paintings and Drawings (brainpickings.org)
Here’s What Leonardo Da Vinci’s To-Do List Looked Like In 1490 (gizmodo.com.au)
Cracked Da Vinci Code of the Day (thedailywh.at)

Do all artists use the right side of their brains? As the region of the brain that hosts creativity, imagination and art awareness, it seems so. However, more people are finding their inner artist can be awakened no matter what side of the brain dominates.

For a long time, humans believed we only used one side of the brain. Today, most people know about the stereotypes between the right and left sides of our brains. This is because thousands of studies have been conducted on the human brain and the way it works. While we still don’t know much about its vast complexities, we do know a lot more than we used to. For instance, we know that the brain communicates between its two halves and its many lobes.

What connects the halves of a brain are bands of fibers that serve as electronic information paths. In most cases, we use both sides of our brain, but typically one side is dominant. This is not the case for some individuals as is true for people who struggle with autism, wherein both sides of the brain have no fibers connecting the two halves.

Where do you fit into this complex picture? Do you know if you’re a right brained or left brained artist?

Here are some strengths and characteristics of right-brained dominant and left brained dominant people…

Left

Mathematics
Analytical thought
Speech
Writing
Logic and reasoning

Right

Creativity
Imagination
Identifying with emotions
Philosophy
Art awareness

After reviewing this list, you, as an artist, may want to gravitate towards the right side. It makes sense right? (Pun intended!) Do these qualities seem to manifest them into yourself as an artist?

WARNING: Don’t be so quick to assume that all left brained thinking is cold and analytical, and the right is all creativity and ingenuity. Some incredible bodies of work and research explain that, due to the nature of our brains, it is impossible to be pigeonholed into one type of thinking per individual. There are always exceptions, and the flat out truth is that almost all of us blend the use of both sides of our brain.

So how does this affect your artwork? Take the opportunity to research some of your favorite artists and their works, and research what type of thinker they were. While you’re at it, explore articles about some of the many other characteristics of the right and left sides of the brain. You just might be surprised.

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