Here at Sketchbook Skool, we talk a lot about how to make drawing part of your daily life. We teach you with online video lessons you can access when you want them. We hope to inspire you to draw by showing you the sketchbooks of our world-renowned fakulty members. But for all of these lessons and how-to’s, we should also tell you why you should draw. As our fakulty and students can attest, there are thousands of reasons to pick up a pen.
Reasons why drawing is good for your mind
- Draw to remember. According to Mental Floss magazine, one of the best ways to remember something is to visualize it, or draw it. From the parts of the human body on an anatomy quiz, to your family tree, drawing terms and names instead of just writing a list will make them stick.
- Draw to share. Oftentimes we try to explain experiences to other people using words to describe what we’ve seen. As a form of communication, drawing can be a much more powerful medium for moving thoughts from your brain to the outside world than the typical verbal efforts we make on a day-to-day basis.
- Draw to recall. Doodling keeps your brain on task. If you’re in a meeting or a class, you can keep your mind engaged by drawing what you’re learning or taking in. It doesn’t even have to be focused or realistic, just marks on paper. Studies show that when given a listening task, subjects who doodled while listening recalled almost 30 percent more information that they heard than those who just listened.
- Draw to stay sharp. It’s no surprise that drawing requires intense observation and enhanced visual perception. However, after lots of practice scrutinizing and really seeing what you’re drawing, your eyes and your brain will start to use those skills everywhere, not just when you have a pen in your hand. You might see your morning dog walk a little differently, or notice something in your child’s face that you never really saw before. While they may be little realizations, drawing changes the way you see and perceive everything.
- Draw to understand. Whether it’s hard science or how to get your garden to grow, diagramming complex ideas can aid you in understanding their complexities and how parts relate to a whole. In Art Bootcamp, Sketchbook Skool co-founder Koosje Koene shows students how to break down a recipe or a manual by drawing it. In that klass, you see evidence of students tackling big ideas by breaking them down into manageable and beautiful diagrams.
We may not be science instructors, but we’ve seen these effects of drawing on all of our brains, and hope you will too!