Association of stability of line drawing and drawing performance

The study presents a simple method to predict the drawing performance of designers or artists by measuring the stability of their line drawings. An 8 x 3 two-way factorial design experiment with directions and phases was conducted to explore the most stable direction and phase among eight directions and three phases of line drawing. The scores of 40 participants' drawings rated by instructors were used directly as drawing performance. Correlations estimated relations of stability of the line drawing and drawing performance. Analyses showed 45 degrees was the most stable direction, whereas the least stable was 135 degrees. For each line drawing, the start was more stable than the middle and end phases. For drawing a plus sign (+), the horizontal line was more stable than the vertical line. When drawing a horizontal line, drawing rightward was more stable than drawing leftward; when drawing a vertical line, drawing downward was more stable than drawing upward. In general, drawing a multiplication sign (x) was similar to drawing a plus sign rotated counterclockwise with an angle of 45 degrees. Line-drawing stability was positively correlated with drawing performance, so line-drawing stability could be used to predict drawing performance. The stability of the least stable direction was the most powerful predictor for assessing drawing performance. All subjects were design students, were right-handed, and drew with the right hand. Persons from other fields and drawing with the nondominant hand are interesting topics for further investigation.