Free Memory Drawing Trainer

A memory drawing exercise with a clock

The exercise is old and simple: look, hide, draw, compare. What makes it hard to do alone is the hiding. If the picture is a browser tab away it is too easy to glance back, and without a clock nobody knows whether they studied for ten seconds or two minutes. Here the picture is shown for a set time, hides itself, and stays hidden until you say you have finished.

You draw on your own paper, with your own materials. The screen only keeps time and holds the picture.

How the ladder works

The study times are 2 minutes, 90, 60, 45, 30, 20, 15, 10 and 5 seconds. You start at one minute unless you choose otherwise. Two rounds in a row that come out close move you down one step, to a shorter study. A round that misses moves you up one step. A round that is only partly right holds the step and starts the count of close rounds again.

A round in which you looked back can keep its step, but it cannot earn a shorter one: the ladder moves on memory alone. The ladder is kept on your device, so the next session starts where this one stopped. These rules are this tool's own.

Measuring the drawing

After the reveal you can judge the drawing by eye, or photograph it. The photo is lined up with the picture on your device and compared part by part, with the same measure as the drawing accuracy checker: how far each part of the drawing sits from where the picture has it, as a share of the picture's longer side. A median drift of 3 % or less counts as close, more than 6 % as missed.

If the photo cannot be lined up, or too little of it can be measured, the page says so and leaves the judgement to you. You can always overrule the measurement.

Light and dark, and three values

A full picture is a lot to carry in the head. Light and dark reduces it to two values, cut where the picture's lights and darks divide most clearly, so you memorise the shadow shape. Three values divides the picture's own range into darks, middles and lights. Both are made from the picture on your device; to design with them, use the notan generator.

What it leaves out

You do not draw on the screen: this is an exercise for paper. Without a photo, the result is your own honest call. The measurement needs a drawing made at the picture's proportions and a photo taken fairly square on. The two-value view is the picture's light and dark shapes, not the subject cut out from its background. The built-in sets are eight form studies and the museum sculptures and clothed studies from the figure drawing reference library. There are no levels, points or leaderboards.