As far as representational drawing goes (i.e. not abstract), if you are not drawing straight from your imagination you’re either working from a real life situation (en plein air), from a reference photo or photos, or from a combination of these sources.
All in Your Imagination
We’ll start with your own imagination, a popular (even default) choice for many and at first glance a method seemingly using no reference material at all. Actually your imagination is part of your memory, life experience, and belief system and only allows you to draw things you know of personally and only in a fairly limited way (Figure 1). There’s a huge difference between seeing an object or scene in your mind’s eye (imagination), and actually drawing it on a piece of paper. For example if you had never seen a frog in your life (or even if you had) and someone asked you to draw one, your imagination wouldn’t be of all that much use to you, it would probably end up looking more like a dog than a frog. On the other hand if you were an
