Sketching, drawing, coloring, art, are all ways to pass time. But do you know that sketching is proven to help your brain? To focus, the brain needs a focused mindset and a calm surrounding. Sketching exercises your eyes, your mind, and your hand. Let’s explore together how sketching in fact helps your brain to focus and to be in good shape.
Research from the National Center of Biotechnology Information proves that sketching enables your brain to think in a different way, letting your brain perceive things creatively. The second way sketching helps your brain is that it strengthens analytical thinking and focus. We, after all, use our brain to draw. The right side of our brain is used for our creativity, to think outside the box, and the left side of our brain is for logical thinking. This helps us both focus and strategically think.
Next, sketching aids stress relief and relaxation by making us pay attention to details in the drawing, and mimics meditation. This, in turn, allows you to calm down and relax. The fourth way is that it helps communication skills. Sketching is a visual language, that has symbols, lines, and more. To sketch, you must find a way to communicate through pictures, and not words. It helps you convert your feelings and emotions indirectly and discreetly to drawings. Lastly, it helps coordination of our body. The more we sketch, the more our brain – eye – hand communication will increase and develop. Artists use both senses of sight and touch, and this coordination helps them become a better artist. The left side of your brain begins to reject the complexities of the art, and the right side allows your brain to take over with its creativity. This helps the artist, or you in this case, rely on your hands movement instead of using memorized drawing patterns.
In my opinion, if you’re a beginner but want to use this technique, start with simple lines. Just jot them down on paper. Then start with dot drawings, connecting dots. Finally, go onto abstract drawings, drawing whatever you feel. Whatever way you feel like doing, sketching will help your hands & eyes, in turn, your brain as well. Thank you for reading today’s blog post! Below is an example of an abstract drawing ⬇️