#6: Drawing from Memory
Like I said: look, and then make art.
Instructions
Find something to look at for a few minutes.
Look at it—set a timer if needed.
Remove the thing from view.
For a couple minutes, try to draw from memory.
For a couple minutes, close your eyes and try to draw it.
What the Who?
A few years back, the internet blew up over the work of Stephen Wiltshire, a talented artist with an extraordinary visual memory for capturing cityscapes. (Hurrah for neurodivergence and celebrating the different ways our minds can function!)
Though we all might not have the talent for remembering extreme detail like Stephen Wiltshire, those of us with sight do take in a lot of visual information, and we can help build that capacity in (and through) our artmaking.
The artist and teacher Dorian Iten has an in-depth practice for growing this ability incrementally. Dorian for also included a link to a book from 1911 by Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist.
De Boisbaudran lays out a method that literally starts with copying a straight line.
In science and literature the memory is trained by lessons learnt by heart, by giving a child at the outset only one line to learn, then a whole sentence, and later tasks of increasing difficulty. A memory for form must be trained in exactly the same way by a graduated series of shapes.
In his progress from the simple to the complex, the beginner should learn by heart and reproduce from memory the simplest possible shapes, commencing with mere straight lines to cultivate first of all his memory for length and proportion. Next should come shapes of gradually increasing difficulty. As the exercises become more complex, these drawings of mere shapes should be followed by memory work of shading, modelling, and effect, until finally he attempts full relief from real objects. And while the subjects increase in difficulty, the time during which he is allowed to study them must be gradually reduced, so as to teach him to seize essentials with increasing rapidity
I also appreciate this tidbit from his bio at the beginning of the book:
He denied that an artist need be, or can be without injury to himself, a bad citizen, or that his conduct is excused by his work.
Making stuff doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk or a recluse!
But Why the Huh?
So why the part about drawing with eyes closed? (Sidenote: there is also a great little book called Draw it with Your Eyes Closed: the Art of the Art Assignment.)
Drawing with eyes closed is a great way to build up more awareness of our hands and movements in the practice of drawing. You almost always get an unexpected (and slightly weird) result, which can help break the need for drawing to be precise or precious. There’s also some science about “afterimages”—when you look at something and shift your vision or close your eyes and see a “ghost image”. This ancient webpage about “afterimages” or “ghost images” explains. (Note: I did not go through his entire website so I can’t vouch whether the dude is a creep or whatever.) But how can you NOT love a website with this footer?
Speaking of imagination with your eyes closed, he has another amazing page on lucid dreaming which includes this image:
Sometimes, the internet: *chefkiss*. You can also listen to a guided lucid dreaming induction.
Finally, on a more relevant tangent, there’s a graphic novel called Drawing From Memory by Caldecott Medalist Allen Say, which chronicles “his journey as an artist during WWII, when he apprenticed under Noro Shinpei, Japan's premier cartoonist”.
Here’s a great tidbit and an image from the book jacket:
“Drawing is never a practice. To draw is to see and discover. Every time you draw, you discover something new. Remember that.”
Lord, grant me the grace to dress with as much skill and style as these two as I age… and to remember that advice about drawing.
***** The bottom part *****
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