1. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that drawing from photographs rather than from life was cheating. The same person who had marveled at a drawing moments before would look almost crestfallen to learn it was made using a photo reference. I grasped that there was some sort of moral failure implied. A lack of willingness to do the hard work, a sense of pale imitation, and also of immaturity. Later on (very recently in fact) I learned that there are two distinct, often overlapping skills involved: the framing, and the rendering. A drawing, the rendering, is evidence of attention paid over time. Framing is the choice of where to lay that attention. Working from a photo made by someone else means you followed their gaze and paid attention to where they laid theirs. Framing is the choice about what to leave in, and what to cut away, whether to crouch or to stand, whether to move in closer or back farther away. It’s wordlessly, across distance and time, pointing to something and saying, “look at that— do you see?”
“War is not healthy for children and other living things”.St. Corita created a poster with these words during the Vietnam War. I hung it in my dorm room. It comes into my mind everyday now for over a year.
“War is not healthy for children and other living things”.St. Corita created a poster with these words during the Vietnam War. I hung it in my dorm room. It comes into my mind everyday now for over a year.