I have been spending this summer doing, among other things, sketches of human figures from model books. The general art-school doctrine is that you can't learn to really draw figures well from photographs, but as I explained earlier, I don't have easy access to "real" life drawing sessions.

Recently I had a conversation with another artist in which I tried to explain why I was doing the figure drawings. The other artist viewed drawing (and other art) as an end in itself. The art exists, and is made, independently of any relationship to a viewer, a collector who would pay for it, or any purpose other than its own existence.

I grew up with artists who believed in the aforementioned doctrine of art only for its own sake. Therefore the default career for an artist is teaching in some kind of academia, which supposedly frees the art-maker to create things which need not have any connection with anything other than the artist's need to make art. Any art shows or displays are then disconnected from any desire to sell art, since the artist already is supported financially by the academic job.

I don't think that way, which makes me a "lesser" breed of artist to the purists. I have fought this ideological battle over and over again. I have not taken a job teaching art; I do commercial signs instead. I would love to make enough money to support myself with my own art, but there are any number of voices in our society and in my own social neighborhood which say that this is completely impossible, so don't even try. Since I do not make a living by my own art, I thus prove that it is impossible. (Is this circular reasoning?)

I finally asked the question: Does art have a purpose? I am not satisfied with art that just sits there and looks pretty, or exists just to please or lull or titillate its viewers. Many artists do figure drawings that are just models sitting there in leisurely poses. Some of these get bought, but that isn't why they were done.

I am doing figure drawings because I have a purpose in mind. It's not to make pictures of poses. It's because I want to make illustrations in which people appear, and I want the people to be drawn well. Some of these illustrations would be in graphic novels, others would be fantasy scenes, and others might be costume designs. There may be other illustration possibilities which I don't know about right now. Some of these may be sources of income. Once upon a a time, I made money as an illustrator. If I don't try again, I'll never know. Right now I am still in the realm of the purists, drawing and painting things which are seen by only a handful of people and which are safely kept away from the dirty, low-class commercial world.

Posted at 3:48 am | link