I came upon this exercise while researching how Kim Jung Gi practiced. If you don’t know Kim Jung Gi, he did these life drawing sessions where he drew realistic scenes from imagination. It was a fantastic sight. He drew very quickly and very precisely, and without any pencil underdrawing.

I wanted to find out how he did that, so I looked up interviews with him online. What I discovered, what he repeated over and over, was that he had drawn from memory since a young age. While he was in the army, he’d memorize what he saw during the day and then draw it from memory later. At the moment he was being interviewed, his routine involved memorizing a stack of photos and then drawing them.

At first, I didn’t understand why you would want to do that. If you have the photo reference, why not draw from observation, as explained in the previous practice session?

Then I tried it, and it didn’t take long for me to discover the benefits.

When drawing from memory, you don’t just memorize what that thing looks like. Because you don’t look at the reference and only look at the page, you are also practicing visualizing where the line should go on the page. And you are also exercising and improving your ability to recall what things look like from memory. You’re not just building up your visual library; you are also getting better at accessing it.

Later on, it will look like you are drawing from imagination.

It really is a Swiss army knife for practicing anything, which is why I put it in the course relatively early, after the dexterity warm-ups and the observation drawing practice sessions.

These two, dexterity and observation, form the basis you need.

And memory drawing then takes your skills to the next level in the following way: you become better at seeing where lines need to go, and you become better at seeing the mistakes in your own art. You effectively don’t need a teacher to point things out to you anymore; you can see the mistakes in your work yourself, and this helps you grow autonomously.

I listed a few quotes by Kim Jung Gi here, so you can see for yourself what he said about the topic.

The memory drawing exercise I present here mimics the principles of growth-based learning, for which there is strong scientific support.

The three parts to growth-based learning are Active Recall, Encoding, and Repetition.

Active Recall refers to actively retrieving information from memory, as opposed to passively reading or hearing about it. It has been shown that you remember things better if you do this.

Encoding refers to focusing on ways to remember something, possibly by coupling it to things you already know.

Repetition means repeating that process over time so that the knowledge moves from short-term to long-term memory.

We’re going to model the memory drawing exercise on the growth-based learning strategy described above.

The steps:

1. Carefully study the reference image. Notice angles, and relative proportions of different parts, and how they are positioned relative to each other; their relative horizontal and vertical alignments. Also, memorize details you think are essential. It can be a good idea to draw it from observation at this stage because it forces you to pay more attention. You look more carefully when you are drawing.

2. Put the reference and your observation drawing away and draw the reference from memory.

You mustn’t cheat! The whole purpose of the exercise is to find out what you didn’t retain, so that you can encode that in the next step. If you guess or cheat by looking at the reference, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to find out what you missed or forgot.

So don’t cheat!

3. Look at the reference image again and compare it to your drawing. Notice where you were off: what proportions you got wrong, which angles are off, which details you missed. You can either correct them in your original drawing if you drew in pencil, or draw it again from observation to notice where you were off. Consciously notice where you were off.

4. Put the reference and any drawing you made away, and draw it from memory again. You should see a marked improvement if the reference wasn’t too hard for you.

Now it is in your short-term memory.

If you repeat the routine for the same reference tomorrow, a week later, and later, it will end up in your long-term memory. However, that is not the only purpose of the exercise!

You trained yourself to visualize where to put the lines, improved your ability to check if lines are in the right place, and became much better at retrieving this kind of information from memory. It’s not just about memorizing that specific reference.

Especially in the beginning, consider doing only one memory drawing. The exercise is rather intense (but very beneficial and worth doing!), so if you got a nice result, consider doing some other, more leisurely drawing afterward and reserve the next memory drawing session for tomorrow.

You do not have to make a perfect copy of the reference! It’s actually a benefit of drawing from memory that you do not have to slavishly follow a reference! You can envision changes, play, and have fun with it if you want. At the end of the day, the goal is to arrive at a nice result, not a perfect copy. You are not a camera.

If you want to learn more about the memory drawing exercise, I have a primer on memory drawing here and a memory drawing workbook here .

Memory Drawing Assignment 1: Memorize Shapes

We start with an easy exercise. The purpose is to memorize shapes and draw them from memory. We’re going to use the same shapes we drew from observation in Observation assignment 1.

Revisit the growth-based learning approach as explained above, and then follow the link below and start drawing the shapes from memory.

Memory Drawing - Easy

If the shape memorization exercise has become relatively easy for you, it is time to tackle more complex things.

Memory Drawing Assignment 2: Memorize Reference

Below is a link to the page that guides you through drawing from memory using the many photo references on the website. The tool chooses an image for you, but you can also choose your own.

You do not have to stick to the reference. You are allowed to play with it, to imagine or change details, especially when you forgot what it looked like. Remember, the task isn’t to make a perfect copy, but rather to create a drawing that is pleasant to look at and fun to make. You are allowed to deviate from the reference and have fun with it.

Revisit the growth-based learning approach as explained above, and then follow the link below and start drawing the reference photos from memory.

Memory Drawing Game

The following is an exercise from the book The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. He even calls it the most important exercise in his book. The idea is to memorize something you see during the day and then draw it from memory within twenty-four hours.

The Morning Sketches APP provides reference images, organizes everything, and schedules all the exercises in this course for you.

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