Betty Edwards

Betty Edwards is an American art teacher, lecturer, and author.  She was born in San Francisco and grew up in Long Beach, California.  An artist from an early age, she received a B.A. in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and exhibited her paintings in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s.  She later earned an M.A. from California State University Northridge, and a Doctorate in Art, Education, and Psychology from UCLA. 

In the 1960s, as an art teacher at Venice High School in Los Angeles, Dr. Edwards first began to understand how best to teach drawing, insights that eventually became her doctoral dissertation and then the best-selling book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (first published in 1979; revised in 1989, 1999, and 2012).  From 1978 until her retirement in 1991, she was Professor of Art at California State University, Long Beach.

Dr. Edwards has presented lectures worldwide on drawing, creativity, and creative problem-solving.  Her lifelong mission has been to return art to the public school curriculum, in her passionate belief that we should be educating the "whole brains" of our children, not just focusing on STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) nor teaching to standardized tests that concentrate mainly on “left brain” subjects. Otherwise, we are depriving students of developing the abilities of both modes of the brain, which has been shown to enhance learning and understanding across disciplines.

For more than forty years, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has remained the preeminent book on its subject, on the shelves of artists and art-lovers everywhere and used as a standard textbook in schools around the world.  The book has been translated into many foreign languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Japanese.  Dr. Edwards is also the author of Drawing on the Artist Within (1986, Simon & Schuster) the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook (1998, 2012, Penguin Putnam), and Color: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors (2004, Penguin Putnam).

 Dr. Edwards lives in La Jolla, California.

Betty Edwards’ company, DRSB, Inc., develops special drawing tools, materials, workshops, and videos to help individuals learn to draw.

You are visiting the only website that is officially affiliated with and authorized by Dr. Betty Edwards. 

Brian Bomeisler

Brian Bomeisler (b. 1952, Palo Alto, California) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1975, and has been a working and exhibiting artist in New York City ever since.  In 1985, he received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his paintings are in museum collections (including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and The Hyde Collection, New York), as well as in corporate and private collections around the world.  Brian taught alongside Betty Edwards since 1988; and since her retirement in 1998, he has been the Master Instructor, teaching Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain® Drawing and Painting Workshops worldwide.  

His students call him a "very gifted teacher," who can explain clearly the DRSB theories of Betty Edwards and also demonstrate in practice how they work.  There are now thousands of examples of striking "before" and "after" drawings created by students in Brian's classes, who learn to draw in only five days.  He also lectures and teaches workshops for corporate and business clients, helping executives tap into their creativity and problem-solving abilities.  

In addition to his work with DRSB, Brian has been an instructor at the New York Academy of Art and other art schools.  Some of his illustrations appear alongside the text in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain®.  Brian has lived in Soho, New York City since 1975, and has traveled widely around the world.  To see examples of his paintings and works on paper, visit his website at www.brianbomeisler.com or email him at bb4art@gmail.com