Measuring from memory - an impossible project?

What I am currently experimenting with, and I don't know if it makes sense or could be recommendated, is measuring from memory.
The set-up: I have this site here open, and some youtube-video, usually some music video with boring visuals, like a concert or something.
I start a figure drawing, look at the figure for a few seconds, but before I start drawing, I switch to the youtube-clip, so I can't see the reference any longer, then I try to draw what I remember.
Initial comfort level 1 out of 10, can't recommend, feels about as pleasant as intentionally hitting a wall with your head repeatedly, while chewing on glass..
I spent quite some amount of time learning how to measure from a reference, but there is always the risk of getting lost in detail  Now I expect myself to be able to draw at a certain halfway consistent quality from a reference, and the outcomes I produce with this method are naturally abysmal and disappointing without end.
On the upside, once I am done drawing the few lines, that I can remember, I can still switch back to the reference and compare results. And the comparison does give me a lot of feedback about my methods of measurement. For the sake of clarity, with measurement I mean about the widest range of techniques possible. Learning how to draw an abstract paperdoll of a human body absolutely is just one more method of measurement, like is getting known to tyoical proportions, and I guess this way of "measuring from memory" doesn't even make sense without some of those available.

What I hope to achieve with the attempt is to one day just go to a park and draw from people, that are actually moving around, and still capture the scene, without either having to first unalive them to make them hold still, or at least having to take a photo, and then using my bad photo as the reference instead of the sight before me.

It is quite a hard check against trying to include too much detail. It's just astonishing how hard it is to even remember faintly the positions of the main masses or major limbs after staring at a reference for a few seconds, although in my mind, before I start drawing, I feel like I remember all of it perfectly. Then the pen hits the paper, and all of that confidence bursts away in a heartbeat once I cut myself off the physical reference and rely on the clarity of the "reference" in my memory.

I think this feedback has impact on what I draw when I draw olschool with the reference "on", as I get refocused on essentials over details. I generally dislike the terms "flow" and "stiffness", because they are usually highly ambiguous, lead to a metric ton of misunderstanding and make beginners just attempt dumb stuff to produce "better flow". But I think the question of essential versus detail is valuable.

Like, it is the undeniable quality of each poem ever, that it is astonishingly easy to remember, given the length and complexity of the text, as poems are in essence a mnemonic device developed by pre-literate cultures. Making visual art "stick" to memory is dependent on creating mnemonic techniques, and I think lot of the misguided talk about "flow" and "stiffness" is really aimed at achieving that.

I think what is missing from the conversation is really just what is going on internally, and how to find something that works for you.  

Like, someone with a really strong inner eye is likely going to have an easier time drawing from life (as you described) than someone with aphantasia. Measuring from memory is a lot easier to undertake if you can visualize what you saw well and for a long time - I'd never even thought about it in those terms, because while I don't have aphantasia, I know the image I can hold in my brain isn't strong enough at all. My approach has always been drawing very fast.

Everyone who instructs people on art acts as if it's the One True Solution to drawing, but the fact of the matter of it is that all our brains function differently - and that is never really acknowledged by tutorials. Sometimes the thing that opens the door to greatness for one person, makes another person feel like they're trying to walk through a wall.

For example... When you say it's "the undeniable quality of each poem ever, that it is astonishingly easy to remember?" I just respond to that with bafflement. Like I can deny that very easy because I am absolutely awful at remembering any text - poetry included. 

I think you are particularly harsh on stiffness and flow because they are examples of concepts that don't work for you. Sure there are many people that make mistakes because of it, but this is also the case for literally any other artistic concept. I don't think any of us have the numbers of how many people make mistakes vs how many people are helped by it.
Essential vs Detail would have the same problem, because who gets to decide what is and isn't essential? That's going to depend on the person, and it's also going to make people fall into traps because their 'detailed' version is another person's 'essential' and vice versa.

"For example... When you say it's "the undeniable quality of each poem ever, that it is astonishingly easy to remember?" I just respond to that with bafflement. Like I can deny that very easy because I am absolutely awful at remembering any text - poetry included."

OK, let me clarify that part. I am not claiming, that everybody can easily remember poems. What I try to say, if you want to remember any text, it will be immeasurably easier to remember a poem, than to remember any other text. Because all those specific forms, rhyme, rhythm, etcetera, were really invented for the specific purpose to be as easily memorable as possible. That is not a normative proposition about how any mind has to work, let alone a judgment about people, who generally have a hard time memorizing texts, that is a descriptive proposition about how poems work.

The more speculative part of the proposition is, that the perceived aesthetic value of poems is derived from these mnemotic qualitites. Poems are perceived as beautiful, because they are memorable.
Which I then extend as a general aesthetic rule, that even can be used for assessing drawings: It is not a contingency, that beautiful or interesting pieces of art is memorable. We perceive them to be beautiful or interesting BECAUSE they are memorable.

Your denial misses the point, btw. Whether you personally have an easy or a hard time memorizing texts in general doesn't change anything about one text being more easy to remember than a given different text.
Like, a 200 pound weight is probably too heavy for either of us to deadlift from the floor. Which doesn't change the fact, that it is easier to lift than a 400 pound weight. Or, more to the point, that a weight that comes with useful handles is easier to lift than one of bulky, uneven, shifty form, covered with only surfaces, that are either too smooth or too painful to hold tightly.
It's an attribute of the object, not of the person interacting with that object, so differences in the person can't deny the claim.

So far, this is mostly an unproven claim from me, I can't just put up a link to a peer-reviewed thesis that agrees with me. I am open to arguments that speak against me, but I will try to honestly critique those arguments and defend the thesis, and I don't think your argument is a good one.

If my thesis stands, this does allow artists a new approach to the problem of beauty. By examining and testing our own capability to memorize, and discovering what the qualities are, that stick to our mind. When we discover the qualities of an optical pattern, that make it easier for us to memorize its complex forms, then we can use those qualities to improve our art.

The result doesn't even have to be universal. Yes, in contrast to an assumed "optimally normal" neurotype, everyone is neurodivergent. But the real unicorns are very sparse by there very nature, generally there are clusters of people who resemble each other to an extent. Everyone is on a number of spectrums, but very few are at the extreme ends of any one spectrum.

If possibly you and me have a completely different way of memorizing visual information, then it is still unlikely, that either of both of us is completely unique in that regard. There is probably a group of people that memorizes somewhat similar to how I do it, and a group of people that memorizes similar to how you do it.
So our quest to examine how we personally memorize visual information will for each of us still make our art more "artsy" for at least a given group of people. And if our perspectives aren't as far apart as theoretically possible, then that group of people will likely overlap to a big extent and be quite large.

So, who get's to decide what is essential? Your memory! At least for the decision, whether it is memorable art (for you). And that essence could in theory even be vastly different for you and for me, but in practice it most likely isn't, and in either case, whether it is different or not, it is an interesting fact to explore.
This could only be a trap, if it actually turns out that for some reason the two of us have a huge divergence in the way our visual memory works, and then I for some reason go and try to drill you specifically and uncritically in reproducing my personal findings, without even reflecting why they work for me. It can't be a trap on the principal level of me pointing towards a very tight relationship between aesthetic norms and our ability to build memory, be it individually similar or divergent.


On the separate, only losely related topic of the terms: "flow" and "stiffness"
My disagreement with the terms "flow" and "stiffness" is my repeated encounter with advanced beginners, who draw perfectly clean lines, but then feel the need to pressure themselves to draw faster, to improve "flow" and "dynamic" out of fear, that their clean and controlled llines could be scolded as "stiff". Which, if you look at texts and tutorials of art teachers who try to teach flow, has almost nothing to do with what they try to teach.
I don't disagree with the concepts these people try to teach, I just think "flow" and "stiffness" are bad words to describe the concepts, as there is massive evidence, that they open up giant halls of misunderstanding.
"Dynamic" isn't a line quality, it's a concept that belongs to composition. Drawing with a hazelnut broom at the end of a 6 foot pole with your off hand while standing on your head and shaking your feet won't make your "lines" more dynamic than plotting your lines via an algorithm from a mechanic printer, because "dynamic flow" is in a different category from line quality. What it will do is make drawing harder and thereby force you to rely on bare minimum expressions, which then might maybe lead to ideas, how you can still draw something memorable, despite the odds, but this is a huge detour.
Whether shaky, unsteady, uncontrolled lines are more or less "stiff" than clean and controlled lines is quite random, as the concepts just don't really overlap. 

And this is mixed up so often, even from people who should know better, that I just think the terms "dynamic", "flow" and "stiffness" are misleading.

A very interesting conversation you are having here. I like both of your remarks.

I have actually attempted the same exercise as described initially: looking at a reference then attempting to draw "from memory". I did it for about a week and then realized it wasn't making me any happier or better. Eventually I decided to just take inspiration from the quick glance at the reference and drop a 1 or 2 minute sketch using my knowledge of shape, form, proportion, design and lighting.

Those were much happier moments and really stretched me. I actually also went out and did this exercise "in the park" too. As it had also been one of my goals to draw people in every day situations in the future. My best place to sit was in town, on a bench, looking up a street. Absolutely noone was interested in me.

BTW: I have never managed to remember a poem in my life :-) But I used to remember complete parts for plays I acted in.

Frohe Weihnachten!

Yes, I did the drawing "in the park" a lot. I have dozens of sketches of people sleeping, sitting, even standing in groups. I found even practical solutions to prevent people from moving too much. Like, if you sit in a cafe, and you see another guest in an apparent state of rest, don't try to draw them outright, they will become uneasy and start to shuffle and move around within seconds, as they will feel observed, even if you are only in their peripheral vision. Instead look for windows and mirrors in the vicinity. If you draw their reflection rather then themselves, they will hold still much longer, as they won't feel like someone is looking at them.

But... this still only allows to draw people, that hold reasonably still. Which really limits the possible scope of motifs. And, walking through the world, looking for sights, that draw my eyes, people in motion are very often much more interesting and expressive to look at. But off course, what I have to draw them is only my memory of a fleeting expression, plus my general knowledge of drawing the human form, and when I try to put the expression to paper, the result is disappointingly between vague and arbitrary. It's like I am not drawing the actual subject, but chosing amongst the poses, that I have repeatedly drawn from photo reference to find the most similar. It repeatedly fails to catch, what drew my eyes, as if the vision turns into a blur, the moment the pen hits the paper. Two or three lines at most, and then everything left to do is to basically apply an abstraction of the human body, based on the ideas about physiology and anatomy I tried to dutyfully drill from someone else's lections.

Which isn't the case for those subjects in stillness, that I manage to draw. I feel like there is a quality to those drawings, that is different from drawing from a photography. Just, that I can't apply the same quality to movement, as I can't refresh my memory.

The frustration part of drawing from memory... well, I do remember how frustrated I was, when I started drawing, and discovered, that I really couldn't draw a straight line or a clean curve without first spending hours on quite boring practice.
There are things, I like to do, and things, that I like to have done. I did not like to practice line quality, but I like to have it done. At the moment, I am just hoping, that the attempt to analyse and exercise my way of memorizing gesture will turn into a thing I will like to have done.

And ofc, instead of doing it, I write essays on the forum. It's like if you know, that you really should do more exercise for your health, and instead you go shopping for athlete's wear. You still can say to yourself, that you have done something for your health, but you postpone the actual frustration of pushing your limits for now. I should really go do it now....

Oh, and, schöne Feiertage, to you, too!