Memory Drawing

Service Description

Every observational drawing is partly a memory drawing. Even when looking at a model, you have to look and remember elements for an instant while you recreate that element in the drawing. Many landscape artists made rough sketches and colour notes before returning to work up their painting in the studio. John Gannam claimed “that observation is more searching when it is acting for the memory than when used for immediate transcription.” Skilled artists were able to adjust a limb or the head in a pose to achieve an effective composition. Such inventive drawing is seen in the work of Raphael and Michelangelo and is due in part to an internalised memory of the figure. By having to remember a pose we look to the gesture of the whole figure, honing our memory of essentials elements of that pose.

Contact Details

• 166a Cuba Street, Te Aro, Wellington, New Zealand