#DRAWINGS OF MEMORY PICTURES HOW TO#

You don’t need “an intimate knowledge of the subject.” Instead, you have to know the rules of drawing that can be applied when drawing any subject. I think you are confused by what “draw-what-you-know” means.

These skills are taught in the Drawing Academy. I hope this gives you a clear idea what to do to improve your drawing skills and learn to draw from memory and imagination – draw from life and learn proficient drawing skills like constructive drawing, rules of perspective, anatomy, and so on. This way, an artist doesn’t need a photographic memory to draw a realistic, recognizable portrait of that model.

When it comes to drawing a model from memory, an artist remembers what individual features this model has and adds those features to a generic template of a human body he or she has in mind.

#DRAWINGS OF MEMORY PICTURES HOW TO#

It is not about keeping a visual image of a particular person in memory it is about knowing how to draw a person and having a strong practice background of drawing from life. If you do 500 constructive drawings of eyes from life, you won’t need a model next time you want to sketch an eye. The same example goes for anything else – knee joint, hand, shape of a skull, and so on. For example, an ideal ear has a one-to-two width-to-height ratio, so if a person has individual proportions that are more squarish, it is not a challenge for a proficient artist to notice this deviation and depict it realistically from memory. Just having one look at a person’s ear, an artist would notice any individual features that diverge from the idealized shape and would easy remember and draw such discrepancies from memory. Such an artist would not need a photograph or even a life model to draw an ear of a particular person. The knowledge of an object – that’s what counts when drawing from memory. This is the knowledge I’m talking about when mentioning the “draw what you know” rule. Here’s an example: a proficient portrait artist does not need to have a visual reference of an ear he or she will have done hundreds if not thousands of ear drawings, perfectly knows an ear anatomy and proportions, and knows how to depict an ear from any angle in any perspective. This skill will enable to you draw anything you want from memory or imagination. On another hand, when you draw from life using constructive principles of drawing, practicing rules of perspective, studying human anatomy, making multiple drawings of whatever interests you – landscapes, portraits, figures and so on – with time, you will get the most important drawing skill: ability to draw what you know.

Drawings of memory pictures