Augmenting Beginner's Drawing Skills with Decontextualized Methods

Learning to draw presents significant challenges for beginners, as it demands strong observational skills and a solid understanding of the structural relationships of drawing targets. Existing drawing assistance methods may fail to cultivate observational skills or the ability to construct forms independently. This study investigates a decontextualized drawing method that integrates full occlusion and contour-based guidances to enhance beginners' observational and structural awareness. The approach first utilizes inverted reference images combined with full occlusion, revealing only the outer contours of objects. Beginners are guided to draw the contour lines without distractions, preventing premature focus on unnecessary details. Once the contour is complete, the occlusion is removed, allowing for free refinement of details and supporting a structured, observation-based learning process. The comparison experiments verified that the proposed method could improve the beginner's ability to perceive and capture forms and structure in a short time period, whereas the conventional drawing methods may require extensive time and practice to achieve similar outcomes.