Good Art by Phil Rice

This is a recent project. A pencil sketch of my mom.

I like this sketch for several reasons and on several levels. I had several photos to choose from (thank you Tom!). I selected this particular photo because I wanted to include the hand(s).

I have come to believe that a good sketch will capture the uniqueness of the subject - and therefore, the best subjects have a distinct look. Good examples from my family are my father and older brother Dave (both subjects of future posts). A difficult subject is someone with a non-distinct look, and I put myself in this category.

For the difficult subjects, the photo is very important. This is a learning process for me. I get smarter as I go. A good example is my brother Tom. I've done 3 sketches of Tom, none of which seem really good. I explain this by saying I need to find just the right photo. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

The key learning - just like a house needs a good foundation, I need a good photo of a good subject to produce a good sketch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 2:45 am and is filed under Sketch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.