According to a technique widely used in art schools, everyone
can make more realistic drawings by copying upside-down
originals. We tested if this is true by asking 40 artistically
untrained participants to copy either upright or upside-down
drawings of a face or a car. Our results indicate that
participants were faster when copying the car in comparison
to the face, but not when copying upside-down in comparison
to upright images. In addition, they were more accurate in
capturing the global proportions of the image in comparison
to the local proportions of its parts. However, neither the face
nor the car were copied more accurately when presented
upside-down. Overall, we observed no significant difference
in accuracy between the upright and upside-down conditions,
with most measures showing a pattern consistent with greater
accuracy in the upright orientation especially for the face.
These results provide no evidence that copying upside-down
images promotes greater resemblance to the original stimulus
image. Implications for the cognitive psychology of drawing
and for the pedagogy of the visual arts are discussed
