From my sketchbook
Drawing is visual thinking. This is where I post sketchbook drawings and other visual play, regardless of whether they relate to other finished works. As with my Instagram feed (@casparfair), this page serves as both an informal background and broader context to my finished work.
Sketchbook drawings, observation and perception
All of the drawings of real subjects are drawn by direct observation: I never draw from photographs. That’s not because I regard working from photographs as an invalid or wrong activity — though it is a poor and inadequate substitute for a sound knowledge of drawing. Rather, it’s because what I value most in the process of drawing is the direct experience of analysing perception that it can entail when properly considered.
When you work from a photo, you have no perceptual information other than that which has been captured by the original you’re working from. To make matters worse, camera lenses introduce their own perspectival space, which differs from that of the human eye. It’s very easy to miss or ignore this difference. Of course, the nature of camera perception as compared with human perception is a very interesting subject in itself — one which I may pursue at some point in the future.