How Experts Draw: Comparative Analysis of Drawing Motor Characteristics between Experts and Novices

Drawing is a behavior with complex integration of cognitive and motor skills. However, it remains unclear how the differences in drawing motors between experts and novices are reflected in the drawing process. To solve this issue, this paper quantitatively analyzes the variations in drawing speed and pen pressure between the drawing processes of experts and novices. The results revealed significant differences in motor control and pressure adjustment strategies. Regarding stroke structure, we found that novices tended to produce fragmented lines with significantly shorter lengths per stroke, despite generating a longer total drawing distance. In contrast, experts exhibited significantly higher values than novices in pen pressure with extremely large effect sizes, which indicates that experts dynamically control pen pressure over a wide range to suit their artistic expression. Furthermore, we observed that experts exhibited higher values in maximum speed and speed deviation. These findings are anticipated to contribute to build drawing support systems that utilize motor features to detect and correct learners’ inefficient states (e.g., hesitation) in real time.