Right Brains, Left Hands – Ditch Scrapper’s Block

This article is excerpted from the book Stuck In a Rut? Ditch Scrapper's Block. by Drex Davis. It is reprinted with the permission of Scrapbook.com

When you're blocked, you need activities that can jump start your creativity and get you back into a fun flow state. The exercise outlined below will do just that for you. For this workshop, we're going to jump right in with an exercise that combines two of my favorite activities for stimulating cre­ativity - drawing and writing with your less-dominant hand, and one-line drawing.

Open a notebook. Put a pen in your left hand (or your right hand, if you're left-handed). Put the pen tip on the paper, then draw a picture. The picture can be as simple or complex as you like, but do not lift the pen tip. The whole drawing has to be one line. And it must be done in pen.

Now, I'm going to throw out five words. As you read the words, write down the word of the first object that comes to mind (keep writing with your left hand and don't lift the pen from the paper). For example, if I were to say "swamp," the first image that comes to your mind might be a frog, so you'd write the word "frog" in your notebook. Ready?

1. Night
2. Day
3. Family
4. Dinner
5. Religion

Now, take a look at the five objects you wrote down. Imagine a picture or scene that incorporates all five objects. With your left hand, using one line only, draw this scene. Repeat this exercise as many times as you can - one draw­ing, one-hundred drawings, as many times as you can. Just imagine a scene, then one-line draw it with your less-dominant hand. Keep doing it until you're bored. Bored is different than frustrated. If you're frustrated, don't worry about that, that's not a bad thing.

I'd invite you to write with your less-dominant hand as often as you can. Doodle with it when you're watching TV, talking on the phone, etc. This is harder than it seems. One-line drawing often requires immense concentration levels.

Each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body. When you're creating, you often use your strong hand, and, therefore, one side of your brain does most of the work. However, this is undesirable on two levels. First, you're not tapping into the latent resources on the other side of your brain. Sec­ond, so much of what you do with your strong hand is habitu­al. Your brain has "grooves" in it - pattern-driven behaviors that lead you to repeat activities when you are in certain, familiar environments. By using a new hand, using a new part of the brain, you are preventing yourself from falling back into pat­terns and, hence, enabling you to "see" things in a new way.

I mentioned that frustration is not a bad thing. Why would you be frustrated doing this activity? Well, you are requiring things - fine-motor skills - from parts of your body and mind that aren't used to providing them. In fact, they are yelling at you, "Why are you using us to do this when there are perfectly good parts of your mind and body that can do this work better than we can?"

It requires more concentration than normal. It exercises new fine-motor muscles. You might find yourself getting fatigued quickly. This is good.

As you work through this frustration you will unlock new centers of creativity in your brain. Your dominant hand will actually get stronger, even though you're not using it. This is not an unusual phenomenon. For example, many weight lifters have learned that if they want to increase their ability for a given muscle to lift a heavier weight, then they should increase the strength of other muscles near the one they want to improve. When they work on the muscles around the one they're targeting then the mus­cle they're targeting improves more quickly. That's exactly what we're doing with these exercises. When you go back to your dominant hand, it will be stronger, and it will feel easy to use.

This can be applied to almost any area of your life.

For example, I play basketball. When I'm not making baskets and something is "off," I stop shooting with my dominant hand. I'll play for a whole evening using only my less-dominant hand (even to take my shots). When I finally come back to shoot with my strong hand, I usually shoot better than ever.

As far as one-line drawing goes, it is a great technique to help prevent, or at least forestall, self-critical acts. Let's take a look at what happens when you do multi-line drawings. In multi-line drawing, each time you finish a stroke or line you lift your pencil, and you "reset" your mind. You take a look at what you've just done, how it fits into what you had done before, and then you pass judgment on it.

Each time you lift the pencil and "reset" you're passing judgment on your work. For some people, this is not a big deal, but for others these are the moments in which they eviscerate their art. They look at what they've done and they're critical of it, or they loath it, or they start thinking about what other people will think about what they've done. And the more times they reflect on their work, the more chances they have to absolutely paralyze their creativity. This is often called "paralysis by analysis."

One-line drawing teaches us to work in a more fluid state, to let the moments run together and to forget about judging. It is a great lesson in taking joy in the act of creating, not joy in beholding or reflecting on a creation. Putting it another way, it helps us to experience the kind of joy you get from playing a sport and being caught up in the game, not in the score.

It's not the kind of joy that comes from looking at your trophies. The kind of joy that comes from trophies is not the kind of joy we're after. We're after the kind of joy that comes not from reflecting on our creations, but from being engaged in creative acts. Creating is joyful and needs no object to justify itself.

One-line drawing is similar to writing or speaking a run-on sentence. Try talking without ending a thought. Just let it run on forever. It's hard and it requires constant thinking ahead. You have to be forming your next thought before you finish the one you're expressing at the moment. It's pretty creative. It's very spontaneous and instinctual. There's no time for posturing or thinking critically about what you're going to say next. By not "resetting" you just have to keep going, pen to paper.

Good luck!

Click here to purchase "Stuck In a Rut? Ditch Scrapper's Block" by Drex Davis.

"I wanted to tell you how impressed I am with this E-Book. I have really loved the workshops and it has been incredibly helpful to me. I am working on a mini album for Creating Keepsakes and have been using the principles in your book, and I really feel it is my best work yet. The book really helped me get out of a huge scrapbooking rut. THANK YOU for the inspiration."

- Jackie Stringham, Creating Keepsakes 2007 Hall of Famer

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