Drawing from Memory

I have been playing around with LeCoq's principles of drawing from memory for some time. It takes consistent practice, but even if you don't do the exercises, simply practicing drawing from memory can improve it.

I was sitting in church on Sunday and tried to set to memory a young chorister, which I later drew when I returned home. Of course, I will never know if it was successful, as I have no original to compare it to, but I think it is my best effort at memory drawing to date.

Memory drawing has enormous potential for artists—with the ability fully honed, one can "capture" scenes without a camera and record them in a way a camera can't.

Of course, the photograph has proved an invaluable tool to artists when used correctly, but often people rely on it slavishly and in doing so weaken their ability to recall images from memory.

It can be likened to transportation—it's great to get you places, but if you don't still walk and run on a regular basis, you get fat and lazy.

The practice of memory drawing forces you to truly observe, to understand the essential structure of what you're seeing rather than just copying surface details. It's a skill worth developing, even in our age of ubiquitous cameras.