It’s easy (especially for me) to get hung up on digital tools, so I found it refreshing to spend 4 minutes listening to Milton Glaser talk about drawing–especially about how, in his opinion, art schools have let digital training compromise the fundamentals.
[Via]
John,
I wholeheartedly agree with Milton’s comments about drawing. Having neglected drawing since high school, I finally worked through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and began attending a life drawing group. I still recall one day finding myself creating a portrait I was really pleased with and being simultaneously shocked that I was doing so. Although the camera helps me to see and compose an image within a frame, to draw something requires a precision and detail of seeing that far exceeds that needed to make a good photograph.
Hello,
Indeed Milton is right. Drawing and digital training are completely different things and it is important to keep them both to improve yourself. I should go back to my basics sometimes indeed…
Okay, one side of my brain (the artist) tells me that this is the essence of creativity.
HOWEVER, the other side(the suit) tells me to hurry up, the client’s got a deadline.
And guess who wins, more often than not?
😉
“…accuracy is the least significant part of drawing. But, you have to learn how to draw accurately before you can do anything else. Then you can begin to think about drawing expressively”
Wow – that sums it up for me right there. Being I live in a similar world as you John (bound by the technological toolset), it incredible to see the emergence of intuitive and expressive creative tools – yet those tools don’t make one expressive (as people might hope), but rather they become so in the hands of those who have the basics.
Thanks, John.
A wonderful reminder of what every artist knows: the mastery of classic craft comes before everything else.
Regrettably, so much of what passes for art education (and, by extension, so much of what passes for meaningful interchange among professionals once they get out of school) is nothing more than reverence for the pencil as opposed to reverence for the creative act of drawing.