Artists supposedly are right-brain people, while mathematicians are supposedly left-brain people. Yet both types of people are somehow surreptitiously ignorant of the fact that math and drawing are tied together. There are several skills involved when someone teaches math and drawing that are related. Teaching math and drawing as they relate to each other reveals how one gains important problem-solving skills, such as the following.
Visual-Spatial Skills
People use visual-spatial skills all the time. In fact, you probably do not even realize that you are using them when you do. For example, when you step over your son's toy truck in the hallway, you are using visual-spatial skills. You are judging the height and width of the toy truck before you pick up your foot to step over it. You are estimating how high and how far you have to step so that you do not step on the toy or trip over it.
In order to to that, your brain quickly uses math to judge the numerical value of the space in front of you and behind/beyond the toy truck. You do not even know you are doing it. If you were learning how to draw the truck in a two-dimensional space, you would use the same mathematical concepts to correctly measure the truck in your mind's eye and recreate the dimensions of the toy on paper.
Shapes
Artists are often quite good at geometry. This is because they are taught, or self-taught, at a very early age that every object is made up of shapes. This is one example where it becomes very evident that math and drawing are very closely related.
Knowing the shape of something also helps artists and mathematicians make choices about how to draw, or how to design and construct other objects or shapes around the first shape. They can calculate how the shapes will move in space together, or not move at all. Both types of people can imagine and think ahead about what comes next, which is a necessary skill for making decisions based on the possible outcomes of each decision made.
The Density or Volume of an Object
Additionally, the density or volume of objects are key in art. An artist cannot recreate the full reality of an object without creating a sense of volume or density. In the artist's world, volume and density are created with light and shadow to multiple degrees.
Since density and volume are understood in the form of mathematical equations, a mathematician can see and feel these things too. He or she does not just assume that something has weight, volume, or density without first being told that the object does have one or more of those factors/facts. Calculating the volume or density gives the object in question a three-dimensional sense, something artists already strive for. Without understanding these concepts, people cannot see, feel, or understand the three-dimensional world around them. Look into a math program, such as one by Mary Smale, for more help.
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