SANDI WRIGHT SHARES ILLUSTRATION TIPS AT JANUARY LUNCHEON

NMBA’s vice president, Sandi Wright, gave a brief presentation on tips and tricks for creating illustrations. Sandi shared some of her knowledge about writing and illustrating her own book. Sandi believes that everyone has the ability to draw. She demonstrated some exercises from Betty Edwards’ book, Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain, by having the group make a fist with their hand and trace it. The idea behind it being that once the words “draw a fist” are processed by the brain, it activates the left side of the brain instead of the right. The right side of the brain is said to be associated with creativity and art, so an illustrator wants to work on awakening the right side while they are creating. Tracing the fist, or any other object, allows the right side of the brain to remain active. 

Another helpful tip that Sandi shared was that when illustrating characters or objects, it can be very useful to mold a three-dimensional figure of the object you are attempting to draw so it can be used as a reference. 
The group enjoyed the hands-on presentation, and Sandi may hold a workshop on illustration in the future.