Excersises for photographic memory?

[Christian223]

(note: im no art sudent) I was asking myself if there is some kind of training to keep more clearly the models you see in your mind when you draw. Im having difficulties when for example, keeping andgle or shape of the models and then pasting that to the paper. Thanks1.

[the_allejo05]

christian one of the best ways..is just hold the pencil in front of you and tilt it the direction the angle of what you want to draw indicates..then hold that angle and put it on paper..what has also help me is doing bargue drawing..which trains your memory a lot.. this means..putting a drawing at a distance..and drawing its exact copy also checking back..looking..then coming to the front..drawing a bit..then going back to your spot..to look again..this way you are force to "recal" what you have seen

[Dile_]

acctually.. after being seriously into art for about a half year..Im starting
to see the shapes ALOT more clearly when looking at em..
before it was just a "thing" now its a whole lot more.. so I guess yeh, drawing
is VERY good for this

[Christian223]

Thanks both, its a shame i dont have enough time to draw "seriously", but im going to try that, thanks.

[sorgan]

Practice, your muscle memory will kick in.

[armando]

So your not an art student? I almost take that like saying, "Don't tell me the answer to this question I'm about to ask." but anyway...

I don't think photographic memory can be developed, and I'm nearly 100% certain it doesn't exist. The mental images of all us average people is vague to say the least, here's an article about drawing from memory. http://www.amateur.org.uk/ior/ior.htm So if it's not possible to spy on our own imaginations we must use some other approach. I think part of the answer is in the book "Art and Illusion" by E.C. Gombrich. Basically throughout history pictorial art has taken a diagramatic approach, that is, drawings tend not to look like their real life counterpart. They are a schematic representation of the real. Realistic drawing is the same, just with more details. We tend to think like this with everything, building more complex ideas with more details.
There is a subjective quality in every image. A symbolic drawing of a cat will jog our memory. We visually construct the object we think we see, subconsciously pulling from a storehouse of various facts, feelings, and experiences("Visual Intelligence" Hoffman). We project an image the same way as in a Rorshach test. What does this mean? It seems the thing to do is: figure out a simple diagramatic image to jog our memory, and add the details by those invisible mental images derived from experience. The only way to get this stuff down on paper fluently is to understand the conventions of drawing, and of course perspective. Radu's "Understanding Perspective" has some pretty hardcore exercises, it's like being able to do complex math in your head.

[Christian223]

I meant that i never went to a school to learn art, but i do study art on my own...

I was asking because i was thinking that we have a library (on our minds) of perfectly perfect images of the things that surrounds us, but for some reason we cannot reach it or see it in a consious way, but i think that in a sub-consious way we do have pictures full of all the details in our minds. Proof of this is some of the people who are born with introversion (sp?) problems like autism (sp?), this people see a picture and can reproduce it to the last detail, they hear a song once and play it on a piano with precision, and this is because they have something missing on their minds... if they can, then there must be a way that we also can do it or get neared to that ability.

"Scans of the brains of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere might be compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. While many savants struggle with language and comprehension (skills associated primarily with the left hemisphere), they often have amazing skills in mathematics and memory (primarily right hemisphere skills). Typically, savants have a limited vocabulary, but there is nothing limited about Tammet's vocabulary. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/st...409903,00.html

[armando]

That was an interesting link, but none of it is of any practical use. It'll be a long time before the thinking cap is invented. Eveyone's thinking including Tammet's is invisible. That his mind should "choose" to classify numbers as shapes is arbitrary, how is it that he understands these shapes other than by a feeling a sort of empathy towards numbers, which happens subconsciously.
Now reread posts #2 and #3 and look how they're saying "look at the angles of lines and measure the shapes", this is worthless advice because is that even the way we remember something? Do we empathize towards lines and shapes? Does a 45 degree angle specifically jog the mind towards any experience we've had? Answering for all us non autistics, no.
Tammets triggers are shapes, since we can't project such images clearly enough to be seen, we must use some kind of drawing or a scribble as the trigger.
Two specific mental techniques that I know of that use this principle are memory chains and image streaming, you can try those if you're curious.

[Christian223]

Thanks, memory seems to be such a huge subject, i googled the techniques you mentioned and i got many interesting links, they seem worthy of attention.
Im going to try image streaming when im alone, so my family doesnt think im crazy

[Looped_Warrior]

All I can say, is if you do have a model in front of you... look at the model 90% of the time and at your paper 10% of the time... that way everything that you draw will be more accurate... as far as remembering and flipping through your memory banks to draw something you once saw... there truly is no secret. the more you draw something, the more you remember it and the easier it gets...

[jfrancis]

The nineteenth century French artist Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran was a pioneering proponent of this general sort of learning method.

http://www.digitalartform.com/archiv...g_from_me.html

Draw something from reference. Let's say it's a skull.



Hide the reference and draw it again from memory. Focus on essential planes and basic forms, not little surface details.

You will be imediately confronted by what you don't know about it. Is the mastoid process above or below the teeth? What is directly above the last molars? Things like that.

Write your questions down.

When you use terms like "above" and "below", make sure your questions are phrased in terms of the imaginary axes of the object itself -- not the axes of the paper. If you ask questions like "In this particular view, is the base of the nose above the base of the back of the skull?" you will be memorizing a drawing -- not an object's form. The idea is not to memorize a series of drawings, but to learn the object itself, so that later you can use what you learned to draw it from any angle. In the photo above, the blue lines are not a fixed grid in paper-space; they are the edges of cubes. When you turn the skull off axis, mentally turn the cubes off axis as well.

Draw it again from reference. Answer your questions.

Repeat the process with and without reference until you have fewer and fewer questions and can draw the object well without reference.

Move on to another view of it and repeat the process until you don't need reference for any view at all.

You may be surprised at how fast you can develop a "conception of form" for a complex object.

The feedback question / answer loop is better than staring at an object and trying to memorize it through sheer force of will.