Wednesday, January 17, 2007

John Howe on drawing, fantasy, and 'making sense'

"...if something moves you, there's a reason for it... and if you can spend the time trying to transcribe that reason, then I think you can gain a better understanding of not only what the thing is, but also what has suddenly pushed you to receive something from it."



John Howe posted an excellent 20min video of a presentation he did at IdeaCity 2006. Check it out here.

I've always enjoyed John Howe as much for his articulate and poetic language as for his wonderful images.

John Howe on fantasy:

"...I hope and truly believe that mythology, that legend are the arena where humanity has been fighting most of it's prolonged battles and struggles, ever sense we started to think about why we are on this planet.

I find making fantasy means that I have to distill reality, so that means I have to understand what reality is about in order to make fantasy in any way convincing and real."

He also talks about something I've always noticed in old black and white photos, they have a quality that's missing in todays photography, that they share with older painted portraits:
they took a lot of time to make, and you get a sense of a connection between the photographer and the photographee, but now "it's so fast you can just click away, you have a 500mg card, there's a stabilizer, but are you really getting the image or not? I don't know...because you've delegated that chore to the camera... and to sit down and actually draw something...and it doesn't matter what the end result is... to draw something is to sit down and spend time with something."

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