You make a lot of sense to me, @otneb! Drawing straight on without sketching does sound like a learnable skill. And I completely agree when you say that, in order to learn how to skip the underdrawing, we need to practice skipping the underdrawing - I once saw a quote that read “the true drawing school is drawing itself” (or something like that). That’s how we learn pretty much any skill anyway: by putting it into practice, making mistakes and evolving our dexterity over time. Now, when you say “it will ONLY work with subjects they are already familiar with”, I think that’s partially true… it certainly must work BETTER with subjects they are already familiar with, since these must be more fresh in their visual memories, but I’d say maybe not ONLY. Betty Edwards refers to drawing from imagination as a kind of “dialogue” between the artist and the art: we start drawing, then we look at how it’s turning out and it “talks for itself” as what we see leads us to new ideas of how to develop it, then, as we draw these new ideas, we are able to unlock new thoughts - and on it goes. @Bobby Chiu also makes a point in one of his courses that I think relates closely to this idea of a “dialogue”: he emphasizes that we should constantly keep visualizing the painting in a small size so that we view the “whole picture” - and, by visualizing it as a whole, we can then make better decisions on what we need to add or change in it. I’ve also heard similar things from other artists like Stephen Silver, Hiro Kawahara, Djamila Knopf… and, in my modest experience (it will be clear I currently DON’T draw without and underdrawing 😅), that’s how the design process happens to me: I often start thinking, then, as I start sketching, what I sketch leads me to think new things, then I keep sketching, and so on, until I reach the point where I feel that what I have is ready to be finished. Overall, I guess the idea that imaginative drawing is sort of constructed within the very process of drawing is somewhat a common ground among different artists. In training, we’re all often encouraged to explore designs and layouts for our drawings through experiments, variations and iterations. But if sketching is such a key part of the process, how do people like the ones you mentioned can come up with a drawing straight on? @John Carter made an interesting point with which I agree: these very skilled artists who are comfortable drawing straight on have gotten so familiar not just with subjects, but with the PROCESS of contructional drawing that they can now “sketch mentally” and draw only the definitive lines without the need to see their sketch on paper to make the drawing progress - it’s indeed as if they’re doing an underdrawing in their heads, like John said. I believe that, most of the times, this “mental underdrawing” process happens so naturally and intuitively that the artist is not 100% aware of it (thus not literally “drawing in their head” consciously) - it’s the automatic (or subconscious, as @Nicolas CATALDO said) parts of their brains that can do that with little to barely no effort because of their extensive previous experience that lead them to get familiar with this process. And, like other skills, it requires deliberate effort, and certainly takes a lot of time to master. But a question I can’t help but think of now is: why should one bother to learn how to draw without an underdrawing? You’ll probably find many different answers to this - to me, personally, I think the main reason in most cases is because it’s cool. I think of it a bit like playing “virtuoso” guitar solos: it’s impressive as a performance, it awes people. It shows that an artist has excelled in mastering their technique. And, of course, it can also make them more efficient and fluent in the overall drawing process. But it’s certainly not a vital skill for most artists, especially since digital tools now easily allow so much flexibility for us to sketch, copy, vary, transform, iterate - so why bother? Well, ultimately, if one thinks it’s a cool skill to have, that’s why! Well, that’s my take! 🙂 Hope this all makes sense!

Hello :) Well, I like to nerd out about this kind of stuffs. Drawing is juggling with a lot of different things. A 3D Form is submitted to a Perspective and to Light. You are translating an instant of those 3 things combined on a 2D plane to make an illusion. The only thing we have in the 2D arsenal is Shapes, luckily 3D stuff is made of multiple 2D. So you need to understand Form, to simplify into 3D geometric solids is because it will be much easier to remember and to apply rules on a defined sets of solids. It's a mnemonic. This technique requires you to be able to add,subtract,twist or bend it in orders to get the desired solid. If you don't use a technique I'd guess you'll have to brute force every shape an object make into your head. Then you apply the rules of perspective which actually is trully a Geometry thing. That will give you a combinations of 2D shapes. Your can add a lighting that might totally alter your shapes creating or destroying some also. Every of those three have things that you must Understand and Remember. Understanding is a big part of the process. You can remember how a cube look like under a certain perspective but if you understand why you have much more freedom and facility to change the settings, which lead to drawing from memory. Diving into Anatomy and Physiology of humans and animals will help you with the form regarding form, proportions or placement of features and you'll also grasps some rules about why some things look the way they do and help you to get easy access to that when you draw. Every bit of knowledge and understanding that you get on those subjects will have to be internalize into subconscious in order to give room to your conscious mind either to learn and add something more or to create. To give an example if you're brushing your teeth on your toilet, while texting, you are only thinking about WHAT you are saying. In the meantime your unconscious is doing the bladder control, teeth's brushing movements, handling grammar, vocabulary, using fingers to text,... and much more. It is the SAME exact process to draw from memory. If you want to be able to only concentrate on WHAT you draw. The others parts of taking a form putting it under a set perspective and then further add lighting will be done mostly by unconscious part of the brain. That it why it takes years to achieve, most of the people you mentioned, especially Kim Jung Gi said that it took them quite some time to be able to do "draw from memory". Also, nothing we'll ever come close to draw with any kind of references with you as the spectacular amount of stuffs to remember will never allow you to draw perfectly reality accurate 2D illusions of a thing in particular. That was my take on it, hope there was something interesting in all that for you :)