A good visual memory is a must for representational artists. While it is debatable how much skill in this area we are born with, training or improving yours takes concerted effort. Two of my early teachers, Richard Lack and Annette LeSueur, both suggested that their students pursue memory drawing and this post provides the details.

The main and perhaps only written source regarding memory drawing is the book, The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist, by Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. It had been out of print for a century but is now freely available online and through reprint.^[1] Boisbaudran taught Rodin, Fantin-Latour and Alphonse Legros.

Another legend in memory drawing is a Degas quote from Gammell’s 1961 book, The Shop-talk of Edgar Degas. Apparently Degas was so enamored with the benefits of memory drawing that he made plans to teach it if he ever had his own art school. Hyperbole or not, his idea was to have a 5-story atelier with the model and first year students on the top floor. The next floor down had second year students and so on. The only students with a direct view of the model were those in their first year. Those in their fifth year had to climb five floors every time they wanted a peek at the model!^[2]

Boisbaudran defined visual memory as stored observation. He also wisely believed that memory training was not about letting unthinking memory work take the place of your intelligence. Rather, his goal was to “cultivate the two side by side”^[3] by teaching the student how to enhance their unthinking memory and their thinking memory. While I was not aware of it at the time, what Lack and Annette taught me to do closely followed these aspects of Boisbaudran’s program.

I have my students begin with what I prefer to call pure observation (‘unthinking’ in Boisbaudran’s terms). By simply staring at the subject for a period of time and then closing one’s eyes, a mental image of the subject forms in the mind. The subject is then drawn from that memory. This is not an afterimage, it is a memory.^[4] This ‘image’ is also divorced from our analytical processes because when staring at the subject the student is not intentionally comparing distances, values, colors, etc. However, doing this takes some considerable effort because we naturally want to make these comparisons.

It is best to start with simple linear distances. Draw a series of lines, each on small, separate pieces of paper. Make each line a different length using a ruler to make them straight but do not actually measure them. After a while, or even the following day so that you have no memory of their lengths, take one of the lines and stare at it for a couple of minutes. When the time is up, cover the line and try to draw it from memory. Finally, check it for accuracy. Do this exercise over a period of days until you are accurate more often than not.

The next exercise is to move on to simple shapes like the ones shown below. Actually cut these out of paper so that they are shapes and not merely outlines. Also, try to make the cutouts nondescript so your knowledge of the shape does not affect your memory. As an example, a octagon is a bad idea because we all know what a stop sign looks like. Do not to use contrasting materials so as to avoid an afterimage. Approach the memorization of these shapes in the same way as was done with the lines. You are after a memory of not only the shape, but the size of the shape. Again, stay with this exercise until your success rate it very high.

The next step is to add value. Go to the hardware store and get some of the paint chip cards house paint suppliers use to sell their paint. Choose one that is matte and has a set of different grays. Cut these apart and follow the procedure as before only this time look at the value of the cutout. Use a pencil or charcoal and shade the remembered value into a 1″ x 1″ square.

A big jump happens when it comes to recognizable, 3-dimensional objects. One could begin with simple casts of a sphere, cube, cone, etc. but at this stage I recommend more complicated objects. When I was memory training I used a plaster cast of a human skull because it seemed like a good idea to learn anatomy at the same time. I recall setting the skull cast in front of me, under a strong light source. I stared at it for 10 minutes or so and then put a baseball hat over it. The hat allowed me to hide the skull while drawing but still check my drawing with the source after I drew it from memory. When checking I often corrected the errors in a dotted line. Initially these memory drawing were mere outlines but as time passed I began to fully shade them. I did one of these memory skulls everyday for an entire summer while I was in atelier.

After some practice with pure observation I add recalling a previously drawn subject to the training. Pre-drawing the subject also seems to result in a sort of visual muscle memory. This slightly veers towards cheating, I suppose, but in real life any clue is better than none. At each stage of the memory drawing you are figuratively taken back to the initial drawing and whatever visual memory you had of the subject is helped along by having previously drawn it.

In my view, the best subject for this is the figure drawing which was done from the model that day. During my atelier training I would go home after class and in the evening try to redraw the day’s figure drawing. As the original drawing was back at the studio I had to wait until the next morning to check my work. Our figure drawings often lasted two weeks but each evening’s memory drawing was done from scratch. As with the skull drawings I began by trying to recall the main shapes but eventually I went after the values as well. Below are a few of those memory drawings.

Color is an additional challenge and there are many options for this. One is to begin with colored paint chips from the hardware store, just like was done for values. From there, simple still life setups, landscapes and eventually portraits can be done. Here again I would recommend beginning by doing small memory paintings from life projects that you have in progress.

Another idea is to find paintings that you particularly like and try to memorize them. Begin with recalling the main compositional lines and then the shape of the main figures. Next do value studies and then simple color studies. Once your visual memory is tuned, try small versions of complete paintings in full color.

1. Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist ^
2. R. H. Ives Gammell, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas, ed. University Press, Boston, 1961, page 11. ^
3. Ibid., page 3. ^
4. Afterimage as defined on Wikipedia. ^