‘Insights’ Archives
Online Musings: Verbal vs. Visual
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
Over the course of the last two years I seem to have transitioned from professional artist to aspiring author. Why? I haven’t a clue. When I was younger my mother would tell me that she thought writing was my true calling, not art. Of course I was a young upstart teenager and had put many many hours into drawing, so how could writing possibly be my true calling? Drawing always came so easily to me and I like(d) creating pictures… mostly of scantily-clad women… or women not clad at all, ahem. I was a teenager, cut me a break! Anyway, I liked drawing and painting so much, that I could not really imagine NOT doing those for a living. I had written all of a few little stories and maybe some decent essays. I thought, perhaps, my mom just didn’t want me drawing so many women…
I put aside writing. At the time I did not quite see the connections between everything. I knew I loved storytelling, but I really was only thinking of visual stories. However, after years of focusing solely on visual stories, I realized that it was not enough. There were elements missing. I could not tell a history, though I may be able to make something FEEL like it had history. There were no internal monologues, no witty banter, no real character studies. Sensations such as taste and smell were lacking. So I turned my sights back to writing in my final semester at Art Center. Everything my mom had said clicked right into place and made sense. Now, I cannot say writing is my true calling until I actually publish a book and that book is successful beyond my wildest dreams and movies and videogames and TV shows ensue… cause that’s what happens, right? Right. While I cannot claim it as my true calling as yet, what all of a sudden made sense was the fact that my writing was nearly as good as my drawing and painting after lying dormant for years. After putting thousands of hours into visual storytelling, my writing was still just half a fingernail behind. I realized that it really did come more naturally to me. This was also managed by a fair amount of reading and analyzing stories and verbalizing those analyses to push my communication abilities. And as I write more and more, I also realize that I would much, MUCH rather make a living with the written word. I would prefer that to drawing and painting as far as commercial work goes. When I consider sitting down and reading for an entire day just as productive as drawing for an entire day… something is up and I need to reassess my goals. Or maybe I just need to get a job ;)
~D
