Waiting for JFK

For the past few weeks, I have been distracted by work (i.e., my livelihood). I am now getting back on track with my art (which I hope one day will be my livelihood).

This month I am doing the Exploring Patterns (Chapter 6) exercises in Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson. This drawing is my solution to Exercise 34, Shape Mergers. The exercise is to take a news photo and draw it in black, white, and two shades of gray. Shapes with similar shades are merged, and the viewer's eye fills in the details.

I used a photo of a group of Fort Worth school children who are waiting for JFK's motorcade. You can see the photo here.

I read that Howard Pyle once advised N.C. Wyeth to not necessarily illustrate an event in a straightforward, obvious way. Rather, it is sometimes more effective to illustrate a story in a more oblique way. I think the crowd of school children is a good example of this. JFK's motorcade would be an obvious way to illustrate JKF's assassination, as would Lee Harvey Oswald in the Book Depository. But I think the bright-eyed schoolchildren, waiting for the motorcade, is much more poignant and tells the story of the impact of the assassination on the nation: unfulfilled expectations.