Every time you look at your drawing you must remember your subject.
To do so you need a developed
visual memory.
You look at your subject.
And then . . .
You must remember it when
looking at your artwork.
It gets even more complicated when your model can't hold a pose during a portrait sitting. Or as the lighting changes when you're landscape painting en plein air.
Both situations happen all the time!
Therefore, it only makes sense
to train your visual memory.
And now you don't have to go it alone.
You can even get started for free
with the FREE E-MAIL SERIES:
3 Days of Memory Drawing
Want more in-depth instruction?
How about . . .
a full-length book?
All drawing from observation is drawing from memory. It only makes sense to train it. Learn how through the only modern book of its kind: Memory Drawing: Perceptual Training and Recall.
Featured Articles
Fail Forward
Humans reflexively resist failure every time it presents itself. But when it comes to training your visual memory, you should embrace it wholeheartedly. Why? Because that’s how your visual memory learns, through failure after failure. It’s how you fail forward.
The Contest
If you were asked to draw a picture of the sculpture shown above, could you do it? What if I told you that you could only look at it for awhile, and then you had to draw it from memory – could you still do it? A contest set up by Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1852 proved that it was possible, “with an astonishing exactness of imitation.”
Draw a Bicycle
Before you read through this article I want you to stop right now and spend the next five to ten minutes drawing a bicycle from memory. It need not be complex, and yet you should do your best to make it look realistic and functional. To get you started, close your eyes and try to imagine a bicycle you own or have owned. Go ahead. I’ll wait while you draw.
