I made a new painting of my friend.

We met in Oregon, back when I was staying in Portland.

I asked her to send over some pictures of her head from various angles.

This was sort of an experiment for me.

I believe that good art comes from the artist’s pure mind. And I also believe that drawing directly from a photo will distract the artist.

The reason for this belief, is that a photo and drawing are two different things, and I think a medium such as charcoal, ink, oil paint, or whatever you are using, has its own unique characteristics. And I think the drawing should maximize, take an advantage of the potential of each medium. Naturally a photography being just a picture made from inkjet, or LED pixels, certainly it is a complete different thing from say, a charcoal drawing.

You have to play by the rule of the medium you are using. Otherwise you will waste the potential and uniqueness of it. I’m not saying drawing from a photo is completely a bad thing. It is just such a distraction bait because it is actually a good reference to be used.

I am having a hard time coming up the best analogy. It feels like somewhat similar to when you are cooking. When you cook from a recipe, you have to take into account the ingredients, right? Say, you are cooking a steak, you can’t just generally come up with the perfect duration of cooking a steak. Although the recipe book does list how many minutes you are supposed to fry the steak, it all comes down to things like the state of the steak and its thickness. In the end you have to actually touch it to determine whether it’s done or not.

Art is also the same thing, it needs your attention. That’s why I think you need less distraction from photographs.

So in this experiment, I had to memorize the structure of her head so that I could draw it as naturally as possible. I made multiple study drawings of her head. This was like a 3D scanning, except I didn’t use a computer and all were done in my brain. Aaaaand it didn’t go as I expected and took way longer than I expected.

But I’m glad how the final work turns out. It was such a long journey with this work, but I’m glad I completed it because usually when you are working on a big drawing, the hardest thing you encounter is not the limit of your skill, but rather the lack of motivation to overcome the long process.

Especially I have been having trouble actually completing my art (except for the little doodles), it feels nice to actually complete one.