Visual Memory?

[sciboy]

How long can you hold an image in your head?
I got a full 3 seconds!

That can't be good... So how do you train and improve it?
And how important is it to your art?

[JERI]

I'd suggest investing in a digital camera instead.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

I'm ablsolutely hopeless at it. Sometimes when I must use reference I might have a picture up in a browser, then I flip to photoshop and instantly forget the detail I was looking at. I'm also bad with numbers, 3 digits and I'm in trouble.

I mostly draw using my 'spine' / reflexes, reference does me no good.

[Farvus]

I think memorizing object is more efficient if you don't look at it as picture but rather brake into single informations. For example:
What was as the angle of someone's arm (or the whole body axis) ? Did his jacket have square or rather rectangular proportions? Was it more round or edgy? What was the pose?
Of course it can be anything. Not only man :).

[onionface]

I find looking at the negative space easier.
but then when it comes to details you have to look at the object.

[John]

Gesture gesture gesture?

You might also regularly try to remember what things / ppl looked like and draw them later, but that would probably be too obvious :teeth:
Also, what Farvus wrote is true. You shouldn't try to remember everything ... just the information you need.

[worxe]

It varies for me, I can keep an image in my head.. more like a movie for about 10-15 seconds, then it changes to something different. Other times its just an image for 1 second or so. I dont necessarily try to discern the details as farvus pointed out, although I should try it, generally I just let it go on its own.