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Traditionally, two theories have been proposed to understand realistic drawing: (a) a bottom-up perspective emphasizing accurate perception achieved by suppressing perceptual constancies and other sources of misperception, and (b) a top-down view emphasizing knowledge-facilitated selection of information important for object depiction. This study compares the predictive validity of the two. Artists and nonartists completed tasks measuring the ability to suppress shape and size constancies, a limited line-tracing task measuring visual selection performance, and a freehand drawing task assessing realistic drawing ability. Evidence is reported that shows both bottom-up and top-down factors are associated with drawing accuracy. Artists outperformed nonartists on drawing and limited-line tracing accuracy and made smaller size (but not shape) constancy errors; drawing accuracy was positively correlated with limited-line tracing and negatively correlated with size-constancy errors in a depth cue condition. We propose integrating the two traditional approaches into a unified perspective emphasizing visual attention, rather than early perception, in explaining drawing accuracy.

Art historians, artists, psychologists, and neuroscientists have long asserted that artists perceive the world differently than nonartists. Although empirical research on the nature and correlates of skilled drawing is limited, the available evidence supports this view: artists outperform nonartists on visual analysis and form recognition tasks and their perceptual advantages are correlated with and can be largely accounted for by drawing skill. The authors propose an integrative model to explain these results, derived from research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience on how category knowledge, attention, and motor plans influence visual perception. The authors claim that (a) artists' specialized, declarative knowledge of the structure of objects' appearances and (b) motor priming achieved via proceduralization and practice in an artistic medium both contribute to attention-shifting mechanisms that enhance the encoding of expected features in the visual field and account for artists' advantages in drawing and visual analysis. Suggestions for testing the model are discussed.