Drawing should reveal the structure of form and anatomy, but it must also reveal the structure of life and livingness. The structure of form and anatomy are some of the tools we use to build our drawings, but we must go beyond that to evoke the full range of the subject’s feelings and gestures. It is possible to make a perfectly factual representation of a skeleton using all the proper parts in their proper proportion and position. Here are the parts.
The mere assembling of parts, of course, results in a cold, lifeless diagram of a structure. Adding muscles and flesh would help to create an illusion of life to a certain extent, but it would need the infusion of a story to make it come to life. With the help of a story line, something to suggest life and living-ness, even a skeleton can be brought to life. Look at what Edmund Sullivan has done with the skeleton in these illustrations for Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Even without flesh, brain, blood, or nerves, the skeleton becomes a motivated being, acting out a part in a story:
So, as you can see the parts in themselves mean nothing. Even if the parts were put together flawlessly, it would mean nothing. But give them a story to tell and they arouse the imagination of the artist and the interest of the viewer. The audience is captivated and becomes only too willing to allow themselves to be carried off into some other dimension. That’s what story telling is all about. And whatever aura you may have been led to believe surrounds the “artist,” the one you should consider and accept is that the artist is a storyteller.
Roger Chiasson, in his own way, has assembled the parts of model, Holly Brown, and given them meaning. Roger confessed that story was not foremost in his mind as he drew them. He first considered weight distribution then balance, proportion, and other principles of drawing to capture the gestures. Nevertheless, he has drawn the parts well, and has assembled them in a way that should inspire all of us to not only aspire to reach his enviable state of accomplishment, but to goad us into a self-improvement program that will ensure its realization.
