How Does One Become an Artist? A Copying Task Provides No Support for the "Upside-Down Drawing" Technique

According to a technique widely used in art schools, everyone can make more realistic drawings by copying upside-down originals. We tested if this is true by asking 40 artistically untrained participants to copy either upright or upside-down drawings of a face or a car. Our results indicate that participants were faster when copying the car in comparison to the face, but not when copying upside-down in comparison to upright images. In addition, they were more accurate in capturing the global proportions of the image in comparison to the local proportions of its parts. However, neither the face nor the car were copied more accurately when presented upside-down. Overall, we observed no significant difference in accuracy between the upright and upside-down conditions, with most measures showing a pattern consistent with greater accuracy in the upright orientation especially for the face. These results provide no evidence that copying upside-down images promotes greater resemblance to the original stimulus image. Implications for the cognitive psychology of drawing and for the pedagogy of the visual arts are discusse