Use Your Eye

Paul Dodd "Model From Crime Page 04" 2013 24"x18" Charcoal on paper
Paul Dodd “Model From Crime Page 04″ 2013 24″x18” Charcoal on paper

How many times over the last few years have I heard Fred Lipp say those words? “Let your eye be your guide.” In other words, “Don’t think.”

I still go around in circles as I look for a solution to compositional problems but I am increasing finding the answers not in the source or in logic but in my eye. I am thrilled to report that I’m learning to trust my eye because I’m finding it works. When I see it I know that this is my solution. But I have to let my eye see it before I think about it.

I’ve been drawing from the same sources for the last few years, a bunch of mugshots from a Chicago paper. I’d rather use the local Crimestopper models but they’ve reduced the size of their photos both in the newspaper and on their website so I found twenty Chicago mugshots online. I’ve drawn each of them four or five times but increasingly I find myself working away without the source and when I go through the stack to refer back to the one I used I can’t find one that looks like drawing. I find this very exiting.

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