Drawing Feeling More Than Fact

"Interrupted Readers" Quentin Blake

Drawing is a fantasy place where anything can be totally believable, it's not the real world. I find it frustrating when I hear people talk about drawing that recreates reality as 'correct'. This is not to say that realism doesn't have its place, studying the real world and academic principles is incredibly useful, and it can reduce your limitations creatively. However when I'm looking at something that is drawn representationally, I often find it impressive, but not necessarily successful. It often communicates what the subject is and not a lot more, not expressing anything unique. Sometimes it's like looking at a mathematical equation, describing coldly what something is on the surface.

To me this is a missed opportunity, when you are working in a medium where so much can be accepted. Drawing should enhance the human quality, not disguise it. If your going to go the effort drawing everything why not push it, why not do something you can't do anywhere but in drawing. You can choose what to show and how to show it. I love work that celebrates that something is a drawing and doesn't hide it.

"Rotten Island" William Steig

I think the key to a drawing being 'accepted' has to do with it being resolved, not correct. Making it look like you did it that way on purpose with confidence. I find this kind of drawing liberating.

Once you've taken these restraints off and you're not bogged down with right and wrong, a drawing has only failed if it's not communicating what you wanted it to. This encourages you to be more inspired, to invent and create new ways of showing things. Like hand writing, there are things that can be done to make what you are creating more understandable, but it can still be utterly personal and unique to you. You can also be faster, as your working a lot with feeling, and not constantly replicating, correcting or cross referencing yourself.

The audience brings themselves to what they are looking at and fills in the gaps. Drawing can get things across faster and more effectively without being bogged down in detail and unneeded information. I find that can give more connection to the work itself, as a playful and more visually stimulating world can pull you in more than a clinical recreation.

"Untitled" Saul Steinberg

None of this is to say that a realism approach to drawing is wrong, I just see a lot of other possibilities being pushed away as a result of realism generally being seen as more sophisticated, acceptable and more encouraged. When I'm drawing, I attempt to tap into an honesty. I try to let the drawing be unashamedly a drawing. Connecting to a child like sense of forward momentum with the pencil. I find that can give my work a freeness and a spontaneity. Allowing myself to draw feeling more than fact.