Drawing on the Inside of Your Eyelids!

Deborah DeLue • October 15, 2021

The Art of Applied Visual Thinking

The official newsletter of Applied Visual Thinking SUPERHEROES. Vol. 2 No. 21 October 15, 2021

In the last newsletter we discussed how learning to think visually is like learning a new language. Likewise, learning to SEE is an essential step in developing your visual thinking skills. However, we don't always have the opportunity to pull out a pen and paper. Those are great times to practice Drawing with Your Eyes. This is a fun activity to pass a small pocket of time and build your visual thinking skills during daylight. But what about in the dark? If you like a lot of people, me included, that often wake up in the middle of the night and sometimes have trouble falling back to sleep, might be just the trick.

Drawing on the Inside of Your Eyelids...

White line drawing on black background. At the top is a thought cloud with a lightbulb and lines to indicate that it's on. Below are closed eyelids and part of a nose.

I first learned about this from visual practitioner, lettering artist, and Neuland marker ambassador Heather Martinez. This activity is a great way to improve your handwriting and build your visual vocabulary. Plus, it's very soothing and can help you fall back to sleep faster when you're mind's running at full speed, and you'd rather be sleeping. That's a WIN-WIN-WIN!

The next time you're awake when you don't want to be, you might try one of these simple visual exercises and see what happens.

Practice drawing the capital letters slowly in your mind's eye. I like to do this with a foundational lettering style called Roman Hand. You can find out more about Roman Hand in Heather's free online course Unlock Your Neuland Markers
Imagine drawing foundation 3D shapes likes cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. First, imagine where the light is coming from, then draw the simple shapes, connect them to make a 3D shape, and add some shading to give your shape some volume. If you're new to drawing 3D shapes, we recommend checking out children's author and illustrators Shoo Rayner's Everyone Can Draw book
Try creating a continuous line drawing of your favorite icons in your mind. You may wonder what's the difference between an icon and a continuous line drawing? We believe an icon is the simplest thing you can draw to represent a thing or idea, drawn using simple shapes from Dan Roam's Visual Alphabet, while a continuous line drawing is one long flowing line that suggests a form. You can read a great blog post by Alumina featuring Picasso and other contemporary artists' One Line Drawings here.

Happy snoozing. See you next time!

Want to learn more?

Want to learn more about building your visual thinking and expanding your visual vocabulary? Our FOUNDATIONS course is designed to give you and your teams the easy-to-learn, fast to implement visual tools so you can draw anything and express your ideas visually.