A Beautiful Intent: Drawing Staircases with Perspective in Mind26 February 2013Today in class everyone presented their drawings of staircases. Here are the photos of my work and those that I was able to take of students’ work:

So one of the things we talked about was intent, especially in relation to whether it was our intent as artists to try to correctly apply perspective to our drawings or eschew it all together, as I basically did. Some people liked working with perspective while others didn’t, and some just seemed to have no idea of what they liked. Our professor would ask some people about what their intent was, and they couldn’t really give an answer which was amazing to me because some of their drawings were so beautiful and seemed too thoughtful to have no thought behind them besides just trying to draw.

When I commented that I didn’t like working with correct perspective because I didn’t feel like it helped me to achieve beauty in my artwork, I had to explain what I meant by beautiful. And to me, beautiful is synonymous with good when judging an artwork as good or bad, beautiful or ugly. When I say beautiful, I don’t mean physically attractive or pleasing to look at, but what the artist really wanted to express—what is true, and honest, and purely from the artist’s ideas.