Memory Drawing in Art Training
The tradition of drawing from memory has disappeared from art training despite its crucial role in developing the artist’s drawing skills, creativity and imagination. One of my teachers, Jon deMartin, says you really find out how much knowledge you’re lacking when you try to draw the figure from memory. It’s a very humbling exercise. At the same time, you show yourself which areas you need to study more and which areas you have learned to integrate very well through the process of drawing from nature.
No matter how many times you have drawn the figure from life, drawing the figure from memory remains a challenge. The only way to reach the goal with greater ease is to continually practice drawing the figure from memory. In Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses on Art he tells (I believe in Discourse IX) his students to redraw from memory figures that they had previously drawn in the life class. Continual practice in this exercise, he said, would soon enable the student to draw “tolerably correct” human figures “with as little effort of the mind as is required to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.” Leonardo da Vinci recommended artists should go over the forms and outlines they had studied that day before going to sleep at night.
In our portrait sketch class with Kate Lehman at JCSA, we were asked to paint the same portrait from memory and it was amazing how much the brain simplified things down to the most essential elements — at least this was my strategy that day. I was more amazed at what I was able to remember, than what I didn’t remember. Simplification and a broad approach proved to be a great strategy in recreating the portrait. Now I am lucky enough to get my hands on an out-of-print book, The Training of the Memory in Art written by Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1847. I am looking to improve my skills in memory drawing not only to aid drawing from the imagination, but to be able to develop compositions in the process of picture making.
—
Links:
Jon deMartin
Kate Lehman
Books:
Discourses on Art, Sir Joshua Reynolds (online version of 7 discourses, here)
Check out:
Another post on memory drawing via one of my favorite blogs, Gurney Journey.
