Studio: international art (55.1912)

Art School Notes

“ ANCHOR DP”

(See Tokyo Studio1 Talk)

BY SUIKO AOYAMA

training of young artists, his remarks will, we are
sure, be followed with interest by teachers and
others concerned.—Editor.]

In art schools memory drawing has not been
given its due place, and still less has the faculty of
mental picturing been considered as a subject for
definite training. Yet what can be more valuable
to an art worker than the power of drawing from
memory, orthan having the facultyfor mind-picturing
trained to a high degree of clearness and control ?
By control I mean the power to retain a mental
image as long as required, and also of bringing
forward on to the mental retina any particular
image instead of having a flow of indefinite
and involuntary images. And before going further
it may be well to explain why I separate memory
drawing and mental picturing. Any ordinary object
can be so examined and observed that its structure
and appearance will be impressed upon the mind
to such a degree that a drawing complete in every
observed detail can be made of it bit by bit in
the absence of the object; a drawing so done I
should call a memory drawing. With the same
knowledge, but with a different effort of the brain,
a complete picture or image of the object can be
evoked in the mind’s eye. That image I should
call a mental picture. A drawing can also be
made from that image. The two drawings may
be very like one another but the operations of
the brain in producing them are very different.
Again, take the word zebra—or any other word
not very familiar—and picture it in the mind’s
eye. As soon as it is clearly seen, the letters can

be read backwards without any calculation, but il
it is not seen clearly the position of each letter
has to be thought out to see which comes next.
The letters can be read backwards by either means,
but there are two distinctly different efforts used.
That difference is very important, and I should like
it to be clearly seen in order that the significance
of what I wish to state may be understood.

That the value of this power of mind’s-eye
picturing is of first-rate importance to the designer
will be evident when it is considered how freely and
quickly mental images can be twisted and turned
about in the mobile atmosphere of thought, how
free the give-and-take is in that region, and what
a fund of remembered and half-remembered things
and sensations crowd in at the inception of an idea.
Hence it is well known that to commit an idea
prematurely to paper, paint, or clay, is to crystallise
it too soon, and to check freedom of invention.
It is better to wait until the idea is hatched and
fledged and ready to fly from its mysterious nest.
It will then have its form complete, and probably
something more—its curious feather markings
which we do not understand but feel the wonder of
—something of the mystery of a vision.

As one cannot form images in the mind’s eye
without a supply of facts to form them out of, it is
necessary to train the brain into the habit of re-
membering the structure and appearance of things,
and to draw those things from memory is, I believe,
the best training towards that object. Ordinary

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