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By We're all about visuals here at Head First. Everything we know, as in we at Head First, and we, as in humans, says that visuals get the brain's attention.
There's an ease of remembrance inherent in photos, images, and especially drawings. I don't know why that is, but I do know that it is.
And it's interesting how inherent seeing can become to doing. Case in point... my five year old, who I must say is a bit prodigious, recently drew this picture (click on it see the full version). So what's the point, other than showing off what my kid is drawing?
How could a human being, never being taught to draw, possibly simply look at an image like this, and commit it to paper? I'm not talking about color, and recognizing lines, and all that... I'm talking about the ability to internalize something never before seen and reproduce it (fairly closely, I'd say) in, let's call it, 15 minutes?
Suppose instead of a scarecrow, it was a class diagram, without all the hard edges, wrapped in images that my son finds interesting (like Shu from Blue Dragon, the game we're currently playing on XBox 260)? What if you showed me the state diagram from a complicated machine at NASA, but all the straight lines were guitar strings?
It's an obvious application... our brain is a camera. Problem is, most of the time, we don't exercise what we capture, and therefore it gets shoved into an old broom closet, and is treated as useless. So how can we exercise what your brain shoots, right away? Sharpen Your Pencil, anyone?
Seriously... I don't think I've ever seen a more obvious example of learning principles in action than this scarecrow. And, of course, it gives a parent an excuse to show off :-)
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Incredible life in that drawing by the young McLaughlin!
Check out this video for a look at just how incredible the brain camera is by watching an autistic savant man draw a cityscape:Stephen Wilcher: The Living Camera.
I am obsessed with this topic because of one of the most
consciousness-altering experiences of my high school years.
I studied Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and Kimon Nicolaides' The Natural Way to Draw .
Experiencing the shift-of-consciousness brought on by brain-friendly drawing utterly changed the way I perceived and thought about the world. The experience is burned deep into my brain and into my body.
Rudolf Arnheim, one of the foremost thinkers on the psychology of art and visual thinking, argues that the kind of visual expression exhibited by McLaughlin the Younger is evidence of "a form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined." Visual artists, Arnheim says, "think with the senses" just as scientists do. What differs is the output: data vs. drama, correlations vs. canvases, analysis vs. arpeggios.
Brett McLaughlin asks, "So how can we exercise what your brain shoots, right away?"
Go headlong into Head First Painting, Head First Music Theory, Head First History, Head First Chess, etc. Technology has raised our expectations by allowing us new combinations of "hard" and "soft" sciences, but have we humans caught up to that? O'Reilly has never balked at riding the hard edge of change and technology. If Head First is Brain-Friendly Guidance, my brain trusts Head First to take a crack at all the inputs and outputs of the human brain. Create passionate users by creating passionate humans. Create passionate humans by creating Head First Humanities titles . . . please.
"Any line drawn on a sheet of paper, the simplest form modeled from a piece of clay, is like a rock thrown into a pond. It upsets repose, it mobilizes space. Seeing is the perception of action."
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Rudolf Arnheim
Peace,
Rhino