Abstract

Art

The forms of drawing are generally expected to match the forms drawn, though there are elasticities of correspondence that allow for expression and distortion. But the color of the drawing medium is rarely referential in its own right: at best the relationship of darks to the lights provided by the drawing surface answers to the relationship of shadows to lights in the motif. So in principle the artist may draw in any color he or she chooses, red being no more or less referential than the conventional black of ink. Why it is that black-and-white photography seems more natural to us than, say, the greens or blues or red of rotogravure may have to do with visual convention, or perhaps a desire for sharper contrasts when older photography aimed for nuanced gradations to parallel the rival art of painting. Western artists have used red crayon or sepia ink without raising questions of where they might have seen red nudes or sepia trees.