Why is it so Hard to Draw From Memory?
Hello Fellow Arters and welcome back to Draw Daily!
Welcome to the Second installment of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. A series where I am going to be going through the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, breaking down the exercises, and explaining how they can be useful.
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Drawing From Memory
As “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” is more about an artist’s sight than their technique, drawing from memory in this exercise is a way to express how hard it can be to work with nothing but what you’ve already stored away in your memory banks. However, unlike a computer, we can not open a file and examine it in full detail and export it via our hand. In theory this sounds quite doable. If you wanted to draw your very own mother’s face, for most of us, it seems like something we should be able to do.
Why then, is it so hard?
Exercise One, Part Two
Next up on Edwards list is an exercise on drawing from memory. We are still only working on the first exercise, but now we have moved on to part two. She simply asks that we recall a person from our past, or someone who we know now. Use that memory, and to the best of your ability draw that person.
She does have one rule and this is to do the exercise before reading on. Edwards wants you to pay attention to the way this task makes you feel. How your feelings affect your thought process, or vice versa, and in turn the drawing. In all likeliness there will be a mental struggle; but do as she says, before you read on from here, complete the exercise!
DO THE EXERCISE NOW
Image Above; Left Without Reference and Right With Reference.
NOTES: Something I discovered through doing this exercise, the one without reference, was that I was feeling oddly constrained and uncomfortable throughout the whole process. I felt like I was incapable of making executive decisions on the forms and shapes of the face. Looking at her expression now, it seems like that frustration I was feeling made it into the drawing.
After - when I was finally allowed to take out the reference - I was suddenly free to create and explore how I went about doing my line work. I had a chance to push and pull different features, and I was free to play around with the shapes before settling them. Overall, the second drawing ended up with personality, while the first drawing captured how I was feeling rather than what I was trying to do.
My Thoughts and Struggling with Mental Imagery
Before I start talking about this exercise from Dr. Edwards, and what she has to say on the subject, I will share a short anecdote. To be honest, this is an extremely difficult task for me to accomplish (that is drawing from memory or imagination) be it a specific, or non-specific, person.
First of all, I have a very limited inner world in my head and I can’t summon images into my mind to focus on and to use as inspiration. Having a reference gives me a starting point that my mind was incapable of producing. So if you struggle with this - know you are certainly not alone.
Secondly, I want you to keep this in mind: the point of this exercise is not to show you that it’s better to draw from memory or that it is superior in some way, but rather why we should be using references - no matter how familiar the subject might be to you.
I’ve talked to so many beginner artists and laymen a like and there is a myth that using reference is either looked down upon in the art world or that it is some how cheating to use reference.
This is both ridiculous and untrue. Most artists not only use reference - they may even go out of their way to create their own in order to find the perfect reference for whatever creative project they are working on. So remember that reference is something we should be actively using rather than avoiding.
For elaboration, see below: How The Mind Works.
Left Brain Symbols - According to Betty Edwards
Now that you have completed the assignment, I am going to be explaining what Edwards describes in her book as the difference between the two sides of the brain:The left half of our brain is very unlike the right. The right half is creative, intuitive, and can work within the grey area of the abstract. It doesn’t think in an orderly way, it doesn’t follow a set of steps; instead it circles and jumps from revelation to revelation. The left half is more about logic, language, and analytics - it is constantly trying to make sense of things. It craves order and to follow the rules.
To be dominant, logical, and orderly, the left brain, when drawing, resorts to symbolism over realism.
As children we are introduced to symbols. The smiley face, the heart, the diamond; we have a symbol for numbers, for stop signs, and for the stars in the sky. These become a certain way of thinking, favoring the left brain.
So when drawing, the symbols take over. It is so ingrained in us that the right brain has a hard time bridging the gap. So no matter what our right brain thinks, our hand draws symbols. We know that this is wrong, but we also can’t work out what’s right. Or in other words, what Ms. Edwards thinks is that we have a hard time letting go of logic, and resort to left-brain thinking, rather than giving into the right.
This isn’t something we do on purpose, it’s just how society shapes our minds through the left-brain education our school systems focus on. This isn’t a political statement, it’s just the current state of education, favoring left-brain thinking, over creativity and philosophy.
How the Mind Works
To help explain why drawing from memory is so difficult, I am going to help you understand how the mind works, as there is also one more detail to mention here, or really the lack thereof. Think for a moment of your environment. Maybe you hear the hum of the refrigerator or the water in the pipes. Perhaps you have the TV on, and the lights. Maybe you’re outside and you can hear the song of nature, and feel the warmth or cold on your skin. We have all sorts of things stimulating our senses; vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell all bidding for our attention.
So why then, are we able to compartmentalize and ignore the things that aren’t important? The visual distractions we ignore, the sounds we can tune out, our bodies are touching our cloths constantly and most of us can just forget about it; our brain discards a lot of information every second of every day, only allowing us to focus on one or two things at a time.
Unfortunately, our memories fall victim to these same rules. We might have memories of the things we were paying attention to, but so much of what is happening around us is essentially thrown out. So when you sat down to do your drawing from memory, you were already working within a fractured framework.
Even Dr. Edwards explains that the exercises in this book, ultimately, aren’t about learning to draw, but rather learning how to see like an artist. To re-train our brains to not throw out 99% of the information in front of us, and really seeing our reference, our drawings, and make educated choices with how we represent these things in our work.
“Now, compare your self-portrait with your memory drawing. Do you see the symbols repeated in both drawings - that is, are the eyes (or the nose, or mouth) similar in shape, or even identical? If so, this indicates that your symbol system was controlling your hand even when you were observing the actual shapes in the mirror.”
~Betty Edwards
Fin
There is hope that the assignments can really help beginner artists, so I will ask of you, do you feel like you are learning anything?
If you follow along with me, I would love to see your drawings and how your abilities grow (or don’t) thanks to the exercises provided by Betty Edwards in the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”.
Send your Drawings to MK@mkdrawdaily.com.
That is all for now, thank you for reading! I am MK and this is Draw Daily.