Pick up the Pencil
Cognitive Research Proves Drawing Is Good for the Brain. Here’s Why.
‘The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing … should be taught to every child just as writing is.’
— John Ruskin
Since the first man doodled on the walls of the Chauvet cave, we have sought to leave our mark: to record, interpret and understand the world around us. In many ways drawing and its increasing sophistication through the ages helps chart our civilisation’s development from the simplest cave paintings to the most complex technical drawings which allow us to build our cities.
Yet in our increasingly networked digital age fewer and fewer people turn to drawing to capture or convey ideas. As architects we often complain that young designers can’t draw, saying that it impairs their design thinking, but perhaps it’s actually bigger than that — it impairs their overall thinking.
So when did we forget to draw? It helps to consider when we began to learn.
When my daughter was born, I did a lot of reading about child development, and I learned that at 18 months children will pick up a pen and begin to make large marks. At this age the child is interested in both process and results. Perception is important, as unintentional shapes may trigger associations and aid cognitive development. Drawing develops into a social activity; shapes begin to represent parents, friends or even the child herself.
By the age of 6 children have become concrete thinkers: drawing becomes about how the world is rather than how it could be, lines are used to denote boundaries selectively and intelligently, figures are two-dimensional. It should be noted there is no further development phase for perspective drawing, rather this is a construct of the Renaissance period.
Sadly by the age of 10 many children stop drawing. As the child becomes more concerned with proportion of figures she becomes self-critical and tends to abandon the act even if it is enjoyed.
So there you have it: from abstraction to representation, independence, sociability and failure, all apparent within our drawn lines. No wonder drawings are a fertile ground for psychoanalysis and research. As expected many studies have attempted to show the benefits of drawing and creative activities; such work has shown that focusing on a creative activity can promote activity-dependent plasticity. This means that the brain changes, forming new networks in response to what you do, in three areas:
- The alerting network, which enables the brain to achieve and maintain an alert state;
- The orienting network, which keeps the brain attuned to external events in the environment;
- The executive attention network, which helps control emotions and choose among conflicting thoughts in order to focus on goals over long periods of time.
Research such as ‘The Perceptual Foundations of Drawing Ability’ [PDF] undertaken by Rebecca Chamberlin at University College London has attempted to show the results of such cognitive improvements by comparing adults with differing drawing abilities. The results show that people who can draw well have better psychological performance in both perception and memory.
Chamberlin found that if you struggle to draw, you tend not to see the world as it really is. According to the research our visual systems automatically misjudge size, shape and even colour. However, attuned sketchers learn to overcome these systems using knowledge and proportion to overcome visual conflicts. Additionally, good drawers have the ability to remember visual relationships and patterns, such as the angle between two lines, and to record relationships more accurately. Finally, drawers have the mental aptitude to switch between the holistic and the detailed, to focus on what matters and convey form with efficient and accurate lines: as cognitive psychologist John Tchalenko discovered, ‘Artists appear to break down more complex images into simple lines.’
The good news is that Chamberlin found that drawing ability and the underpinning mental processes will increase with practice, raising the possibility of increasing intellectual functioning in adults as well as children. The benefits to our working and emotional lives are obvious and exciting.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to draw something.
By Christian Coop, Designer, NBBJ
See more at meanstheworld.co
