Friday, February 19, 2010

Drawing Vs. Photography

The winner is clear

Preliminary watercolor sketch

There's nothing more uncanny then when a blank piece of watercolor paper gets filled up with lines and colors representing some "real" object or other.

I used to feel this way with photography. The slow, magical way in which the image appears on the photographic paper is always surprising. But drawing is that much more satisfying because it is infinitely harder, since the exercise involves much more (intellectually and technically) than the photographic process. I'll stick to that opinion, and photographers the world over will pounce on me, I know.

Of course, this conflict between photography and drawing/painting has been an eternal one. But, despite all the clever and sophisticated arguments that photographers make, however "differently" they present themselves, however beautifully they represent the world around us, drawing and painting wins hands down.