The souvenir method
Look for three minutes. Turn away. Draw from memory for ten. Compare for one. Repeat three times. Memory keeps the masses and throws away the clutter.
Corot titled his late landscapes Souvenir de Mortefontaine, Souvenir d'Italie, because they were drawn from memory. He had looked for decades; what the memory kept was the design, the mood and the three divisions of light, and what it discarded was every twig. That is exactly the filter a beginner needs, and you can borrow it with a simple drill.
Set up in front of a subject (or a reference image). Look for three minutes: squint, name the three masses aloud, find the lightest light and the darkest dark, follow the main edges with your eye. Then turn your back, or close the image, and draw for ten minutes using only what you remember: masses first, in three values. Then look again for one minute and say out loud what you got wrong. Then repeat. The third drawing is always the best, and it is yours in a way a copy never is.
Do this once a week through the Mass unit and you will find that your drawings from observation also get simpler and stronger, because you start looking for what memory would keep.
From your kit
The whole kit →- 1Pitt Matt 8B and 12B a memory drawing is masses and a few accents; soft matt grades keep you from detail.
- 2Kneaded eraser the lights come out last.
Visuals
Corot, Italian Landscape, c. 1865. etching.
Corot, Italian Landscape (etching, c. 1865). Drawn forty years after he left Italy. The trees, the light and the sky are what he remembered; the details are invented to serve them.
The Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland
Pitfalls
What
Peeking during the drawing phase.
Why
You start copying again and memory never gets exercised.
Fix
Physically turn the chair or close the image. No exceptions.