Memory Drawing: Perceptual Training and Recall

Why should an artist bother to train their visual memory, and what does that even mean? Can't I just paint what's in front of me, or from a photograph, or from my imagination? These are the kinds of questions I get from students when I bring up the subject of memory drawing. The simple answer is, of course you can. However, having a well-developed visual memory can be of immense help to your from-life work as well as when working from your imagination.
Whether the end-goal is drawing, painting or sculpting directly from life or from your memory, memory drawing begins with an intentional effort to visually observe the subject. How well the subject is remembered is directly related to how well it is observed. In other words, artists need to become expert observers in order to have exceptional visual memories. This is true for many fields and very often the memory skill of experts is geared towards their expertise. In a sense, they expect to see what they are trained to see. They look for it.
As the subtitle of the book alludes to, this book is as much about learning to perceive what you see as it is about memory drawing.
Memory Drawing: Perceptual Training and Recall more fully answers the above questions and provides a curriculum for training your abilities to visually perceive and training your visual memory.

All drawing and painting from life is at some point done from memory, even if that memory is only seconds old. An artist's ability to recall something previously seen is all the more important when their subject is no longer in view. Da Vinci, Corot, Degas, Whistler, and Inness wrote about it. In fact, Inness claimed that many of his best landscape paintings were done from memory. Memory Drawing: Perceptual Training and Recall teaches you how to visually perceive and accurately recall those perceptions. It will also help you improve your abilities to remember fleeting effects, seize essentials, and even enhance your imagination.

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