Yesterday, while searching for art exercise ideas, I wandered all over cyberspace for inspiration and stumbled upon a couple of wonderful sites. One of the ideas that appealed to me was drawing from memory. I learned that Leonardo Da Vinci recommended that artists review in their imagination the outlines of forms they had studied during the day. In the same vein, Sir Joshua Reynolds told his students to draw from memory what they had previously drawn during the life class. Artist and educator Marvin Bartel has a wonderful site about teaching art and fostering creativity in children. The exercises there are good for all artists.
I then rummaged through my kitchen drawers and found a wine bottle opener to practice a modified form of the exercise. I studied it for about a minute or so, hid it from my sight and then started drawing what I thought it looked like. I know I need to work on my observational and memory skills!
