There’s one thing every great artist has in common—a trained eye.

It’s not about talent. It’s not about getting the best gear. It’s about how sharply you see.
A trained artist’s eye can detect subtle angles, negative shapes, proportion shifts, edge quality, value contrast… and hold those things in memory.

Let’s explore a few strategies you can steal from pro artists to sharpen your visual perception every single day.

How to Train Your Eye Like an Artist

Practical daily habits to build visual memory and shape recognition.

1. Compare More Than You Copy

When you look at a subject—whether it’s a model, a photo, or a still life—ask yourself:
What’s the tilt of that line? How far is that elbow from the ribcage? What shape is the shadow under the nose?

Train your eye to **compare your model and your subject**.

This technique is called “Comparative measurement”: it trains to see how one thing relates to another. This is how classical students are trained from day one.

We're not copying but **comparing relationships on the model** **and** **on the subject**.

🔎How it works: The idea is to find two elements on your model - let’s call them A and B - and compare them (distance, angle , shape). Then we’re not simply copying A and B on our canvas but we’re making sure that the relation between A and B is the same on the canvas as it appears on the model.

I hope you can catch the nuance here, it’s fundamental! The more you do this, the more precise your eye becomes.

2. The Look-Close, Look-Far Game

One thing beginners struggle with is keeping visual information intact between the moment they look at the model and the moment they make corrections on their canvas. Indeed, it’s like trying to memorize abstract shapes that are not meant to be isolated. It’s a short time, only as long as moving your head but you wouldn’t believe how much can be lost for an untrained eye.

This is why, in the Atelier, we strongly recommend to stand up to paint. A good easel setup is one that allows your eyes to embrace the model and your subject side by side with ease, without moving your head. This means having a viewing spot a few steps away from your easel.

This viewing spot is your power position : this is where you can look at your work from a distance, and you can so easily move back and forth between your model and your subject with your eyes that it compensates for the difficulty of visual memorization.

The idea is then to move regularly between your easel (close) and your viewing spot (far).

This habit trains two skills at once:

Visual memory – holding images in your mind
Shape recognition – abstracting complex forms into simple blocks

Before we move on... Quick Update about the Art Retreat

Since I've received questions from you all and it seems like the previous date was a bit too short notice, we decided to reschedule the retreat for 2026!

Note this on your calendars, new date : April 20 - 27, 2026
You can still find all the information you need by following the link below :

Art Retreat with Florent Farges, April 2026

Thanks for your attention, now back to our regular Newsletter.

3. Train Your Visual Memory with This Simple Drawing Exercise

Here’s a great atelier-inspired drill you can add to your sketch routine:

Pick a simple subject (a face, a hand, a bottle—anything).
Look at it for 30 seconds. No drawing.
Then, without looking back, draw it entirely from memory.
After you finish, compare your drawing to the subject. Then, do a second version from observation.

Check it out in this old video from my channel:

This exercise does two things:

It shows you exactly what your eye remembers—and what it doesn’t.
It strengthens your ability to construct mentally, which is critical for building figures, heads, and compositions from imagination.

It’s humbling at first, but incredibly effective. Even just one of these memory drawings per day can lead to noticeable improvement.

4. Train Your Eye and Don’t Lose Your Gains

Even after years of training, professional artists still do basic exercises. Why? Because your eye is like a muscle—stop using it and it gets dull.

This is why many atelier-trained painters continue to do cast drawings, gesture studies, or thumbnail compositions throughout their careers.
Not because they “need to”—but because they know it keeps their perception sharp.

Pro tip : artists use their **preparation** as practice to optimize time management.

If you don’t draw for a while, you might notice:

Shapes feel harder to measure.
Light and shadow don’t “read” the same way.
Drawing from imagination becomes stiff or inaccurate.

That’s normal. The solution? Keep training, even lightly. To optimize your time, use preparation for future works as your practice. 5–10 minutes a day of active visual practice can help maintain and deepen your perception over time.

Final Thought: It’s Not Magic, It’s Habit

You don’t need special talent to train your eye—just consistency.
These habits aren’t complicated, but they build up day by day.

Draw what you remember. Compare what you see. Sketch without perfection.
And most importantly: enjoy the process. Training your eye is part of the craft—and part of the joy.