Exposure, Upside Down Drawing, Memory Tricks, and Dog Poop

Putting Yourself Out There

Sharing things you create is always a little scary. Yesterday, I shared the rough draft of a podcast script.

Luckily, I have great friends that read it and said great things to me about it. Shoutout to Jason and Dan.

It’s been a goal of mine to share more things this year.

It’s still early, but I’ve been doing it a lot. I’m really proud how everything has turned out thus far.

I Drew This Upside Down Today

I’m going through Drawing on the right side of the brain by Betty Edwards. In today’s exercise, the goal was to shift your brain from L-mode (reft side of the brain, mathematics, reading, etc.) to R-mode (right side of the brain, creativity, drawing, etc…). I don’t understand all of the science, but the way this allegedly works is by obfuscating what you think you’re drawing. You’re not constantly double checking yourself and this allows you to “just draw” and drift into R-mode.

The task was to take a line drawing that was upside down in the book and draw it. Although I royally screwed up the bottom and the hands, I’m really happy how it turned out. If you find yourself constantly erasing and redrawing, you’re probably operating in L-mode. I was drawing in this manner for 90% of the exercise.

At one point, I noticed everything started to click. I could feel myself drawing with the right side of the brain. Instead of deep lines, I was drawing short choppy strokes and connecting them. It was around the time when I was drawing the tie. I started drawing differently. It was an odd experience, but enjoyable.

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For comparison, here is the original I was copying from009f21fa3e25fd95409972741007abe7

 

 

Memory Tricks

My wife gave me a list of 4 items to buy at the grocery store. I didn’t write them down, but I used the memory palace technique to remember the items. Spoiler alert: it worked!

Spinach
Parmesan Cheese
Bottle of Wine
Ice Cream

Here was the image I imagined to remember these 4 things: Popeye (who loves spinach) dancing with my buddy Nick Pennisi (who says “Butter Me Johnny” and makes it sound like Parmesan [said in a really, really Italian voice]). I then imagined a myself passed out in my underwear next to the dancing men with an empty bottle of wine next to me and chocolate all over my face.

You bet your ass I didn’t forget anything on that list!

Weird Things You See In Boston

I came upon this today. A giant rolled up carpet with dog poop inside.

Dog Poop Inside
(You know it’s there because it says it)

City Living…