View Single Post
Old 7 November 2009, 06:06 AM   #66 (permalink)
Russell Smith
Forum Ace
 
Russell Smith's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Charlotte, NC
Posts: 1,574
 

My Gallery
Quote:
Originally Posted by AAC Cadet Leader View Post
Good illustration is a learned skill.
Good art comes from the soul.
Good illustration plus soul makes for good art. Usually.
Very true.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AAC Cadet Leader View Post
But nothing happens without the soul.
Good illustration without soul just doesn’t cut it.
Also true, but for a moment think of good illustration as a language - good grammer, so to speak - i.e. something to be learned so that we may communicate our meanings intentions in a clear and concise manner so that the majority of people can understand us. If I am unable to express my meanings clearly, then I become like Jodie Foster in "Nell" - innocent and pure with my meaning, but speaking gibberish.

Put another way, I once read a profound quote (I wrote it down but I can't remember who said it). Replace the words "illustration" with "intellect" and "Soul" with "emotion":
Intellect is to emotion what clothes are to out bodies. Clothes without a body are useless, but we certainly can't walk around naked all the time


Quote:
Originally Posted by AAC Cadet Leader View Post
Randomly, others get lucky.
Sometimes innocent children and adults with no illustration skills create something that touches other people’s souls. That’s good art, too.
Here's a rhetorical question: I saw a news report recently about a dog who could paint. Okay, we've all seen such things - animals with paintbrushes in their mouths spreading random color on a piece of paper. The dog is color blind and can't see many of the colors that its spreading around, but if it touches my soul, is it art?
__________________
"Art is about creating a feeling, an emotion, not about creating a pictorial catalog of the artist's knowledge and research" - Gil Cohen.
Russell Smith
site: www.russellsmithart.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Russel...s/103226508613

Russell Smith is offline