Assignment 2: Google your favorite animals, cats, dogs or giraffes.
Save the image on your computer.
Observe and study it for 5-10 minutes.
Close the image.
Draw from your memory.
You can cheat and look at it every 15-20 minutes. However, the rule is don't just copy.
Learning to do more than just see – to observe, study and remember one’s subject is essential to learning to draw and paint.
The next step is to develop and work from a strong visual memory. The development of a visual memory is the way to retain one’s observations and pull from them not only the essential visual elements of the moment, but also the emotion connected to them.
After many years of practice, this process can happen almost unconsciously every time we pick up a brush, even when painting outdoors. Back in the studio, we rely even more heavily on our visual library to instill life and emotion in our work. It is no wonder, then, that art created in partnership with the visual memory has the ability to touch emotion and engage the viewer more than mere representation.
“simply to reproduce in other minds the impression which a scene has made upon him . . . A work of art does not appeal to the intellect. It does not appeal to the moral sense. Its aim is not to instruct, not to edify, but to awaken an emotion . . . Details in the picture must be elaborated only enough [to] fully reproduce the impression that the artist wishes to reproduce. When more than this is done, the impression is weakened or lost, and we see simply an array of external things which may be very cleverly painted, and may look very real, but which do not make an artistic painting.” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1878, “A Painter on Painting”, George Inness.)
http://www.artistdaily.com/blogs/oil-painting/visual-memory
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