When a novice artist first visits a museum for inspiration or practice, the professional artwork within museums can be intimidating to work with. They are expected to analyze a work of art, dissect the figures into basic shapes, find the intersections of objects, and compute proportions. The complex layers of paint, chisel marks, or pen lines erase all the scaffolding that the original artist might have used to create their masterpiece. So, a novice is expected to work backwards and re-create the scaffolding themselves. But, their eye is not yet trained to initially ignore the small details and visualize the scaffolding of an art piece. I know from first-hand experience that this sketching process can be overwhelming, and it can discourage newcomers from ever trying.
An art professor can constantly appeal to their student’s imagination, but their effort is in vain if a student simply cannot see or understand their suggestions. Therefore, it would be helpful to create some sort of drawing helper that uses augmented reality to change how an art pieces is viewed. For example, a grid could appear over the camera view to help with proportions. The alternative, a viewfinder, is too troublesome to hold while drawing and proportions can still be ruined by small movements or changing distance between the artist’s eye and the viewfinder. However, it is important to learn how to create scaffolding without any help. So the artist helper could be limited for more experienced learners or controlled by the novice artist’s teacher.
A viewfinder from the Blick art supplies website (a grid should be visualized within the center square).