Sunday, July 12, 2009

drawing from life or drawing from a photograph?

This cartoon is from today's Sunday Parade magazine, I found it in the Chicago Tribune. I wish to give this artist Dave Coverly all the credit for the humorous depiction of an artist at work.
In reality, sadly, we artists do have to work from photos and from images on our computer monitors.
There is no question about this, drawing from life is the far better option if you have it.
I have been working as an illustrator for many years now and nearly all of my assignments have not made it possible to work from life. I will get my friends and family to pose or act out the scenes to be illustrated. I will spend a lot of time on research at the library, on the internet , or at a history museum. I will artificially light a still life set up and work from that if need be.
But I much prefer the wonderful "real time" experience of drawing from a live model.
And the drawings that I have posted in this blog are (almost) all the time, real time sketches from the real moment in time.