art for all

24 Why it doesn't look just like the photo

April 12, 2021 Daniel Gregory Season 2 Episode 24
art for all
24 Why it doesn't look just like the photo
Show Notes Transcript

What is the difference between the photos we take and the art we could be making?


I try to do my best to answer all emails people send me, especially those with pressing questions.  If you'd like to write to me, my email is dannygregory@sketchbookskool.com



Welcome to art for all the sketchbook Skool podcast. I'm your host, Danny Gregory. And I'm pretending that I'm a late night DJ, but I'm not. I'm just some guy on a podcast. I'm also the founder of sketchbook Skool. I am a sketchbook artist and I'm the author of a dozen or so books on art and creativity. And I take a lot of photos after all. I basically carry a camera with me everywhere I go in, in my pocket, on my phone. So do you, bro, but what's the difference between snapping a picture and drawing one? Well, in the 1980s, when photocopying technology became increasingly available, David Hockney made a series of prints using a Xerox machine. And I was looking at some of these prints recently and I was trying to overcome my initial dismissive reaction. These aren't Prince, but of course they are. They were state of the art prints in their day. Printing is, and there's always been a mechanical method of making multiple reproductions of an image. In the past artists use woodblocks and etchings and engravings and then lithography and screen printing and on and on. And today, lots of artists sell Macleay prints of their work prints that are basically just digital scans of their drawings, which are then processed and printed on inkjet printers. So what if we skip the paper part of it altogether? And we use an iPhone. And, uh, a distant computer server. Isn't that basically the same idea. Our instincts say, no, it's somehow not hard enough or special enough, and where's the craft, but of course a good digital scan can take experience and tools and work. So that's not it. Or maybe it's posterity the sense that an old Xerox or a computer printout surely won't survive for hundreds of years. Like a, like a door cut, but with archival papers and inks and proper handling, that's probably not the case either. I think there, the real issue is scarcity. If you can just push a button and bang out an infant, infinite number of reproductions. Well, it's no longer precious. It's a lot of limited edition. It's no longer valuable. And if somebody can make an infinite number of copies, then there's really no value to any particular one, a work of art capital w capital a is reduced to the same status as, as a call report or a lost pet flyer. So the art market capital, a capital M. Has trained us to dismiss this way of looking at it. If it can't be bought or sold for increasing amounts, then don't bother making it. Now if inventive, creative, curious people like Albrook dura or. Rembrandt van Ryan had been able to just make thousands and thousands of copies of their images with just the push of a button. Believe me, they would not have been sweating over blocks of wood. They weren't burdened with the same market concerns that weigh down our view of art here in the 21st century, they made limited additions, mainly because it took a hell of a lot of work to get even a dozen proper prints from copper plate. But that's not really what I want to talk about today. I think he met Hockney's Xerox's has made me think about how technology is constantly improving the way that it solves basic human problems, not just labor saving devices, but things that make our lives better and richer examples of bound. But what about image making. There was a point when people drew on cave walls with blood and mud to make some point lost to the sands of time, but they were using the best image making technology that they had. And eventually we figured out how to carve stone statues and to make fresco and to stretch canvas and so on. So this image making and image sharing had a purpose. Usually it was to tell a story or to pass on some vital information. This is what the gods did, or this is how we won this war, or this is how handsome and powerful the King is. This is how Jesus came back. And so, but nowadays, if Jesus came back again, we would probably use. Tick-tock or an Instagram post to share the news, not a fresco or calligraphy on a goatskin. So if in one split second, and with no real experience or skill, you can use the phone in your pocket to make an image that's technically superior and precise, superior to anything that you can make with a pencil. Why make art at all anymore? And that's a good question that people have been asking themselves for a couple hundred years and the answer that many in Monet and Sirach and says on and Vango and the rest of the gang came up with over a hundred years ago is that the purpose of art is no longer to reproduce physical reality. It's to convey how we feel about it, to capture the human condition. The way we see the world through the veils of subjectivity and experience and emotion and history and all the rest of the stuff that makes us who we are. And this is something we have to think about when we draw, stop assessing your work based on how close it is to reality, quote unquote, and don't bother posting a snapshot of your dog next to the drawing. You did have it. Because really who cares if you're almost as good as that camera in your pocket? Because in fact, you're not even close. That photo is a far better way to make that image more efficient, more accurate, but that image that's not really all you want. Is it what you want us to capture your soul, your inner state. The love that you feel for that dog. You want to make a picture of the inside of your mind of your heart. Don't worry about xeroxing reality with your sketchbook, focus on capturing you instead. And so far, nobody in Silicon Valley or anywhere else. Has come up with an app for that. Thanks for joining me today. I'll create something new for you again next week until then I'm Danny Gregory. And this is art for all.