There are other cases in 
which drawings do not 
necessarily reflect what is 
perceived. Clinical 
psychologists and psychiatrists 
make use of a diagnostic tool 
known as the Bender-Gestalt 
test. Many psychologists have 
interpreted the errors 
individuals make in copying 
various geometrical patterns on 
this test as perceptual in 
origin. For reasons similar to 
those given above, it seems to 
me to be highly unlikely that 
this is the case. Rather, for 
unknown reasons, individuals 
do not draw what they perceive. 
Similar errors of reasoning 
were made in the history of 
psychology with respect to 
memory and drawing. To study 
how a figure was remembered, 
subjects were asked to draw it 
from memory. Later it was 
realized that there were better 
ways to probe the accuracy of 
memory than by a drawing task.

    Given these confusions, it is 
important to discuss the 
relevance of perception to 
drawing or painting. As will 
become evident, I believe that, 
in certain cases, what we draw 
does reflect how we perceive. 
But from the examples above it 
is clear that what we draw is 
governed by many factors other 
than perceptual ones.

    Why is drawing so difficult 
for most of us? Why do children 
draw the way they do? Why did 
good representational 
perspective art flower so late 
historically? We cannot answer 
these questions with any 
finality, but I believe that the 
psychology of perception can 
shed some light on them.

    The problems most people 
have in drawing are not 
primarily ones of motor skill. 
After all, most of us can do a 
reasonably good job of copying a 
triangle, a rectangle, or even a 
simple, irregular two-
dimensional shape. The 
problems, I believe, are instead 
mainly perceptual or cognitive 
in nature. Their origins lie in 
how we perceive, how we copy 
things, how and what we know 
about things, and how we 
remember things.