From the Oxford Dictionary

-art “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”

-design 1 a plan or drawing . . . . 2 an arrangement of lines or shapes created to form a pattern or decoration 3 purpose, planning or intention that ixists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object: the appearance of design in the universe. 

-decoration “the process or art of decorating or adorning something” “ornamentation.”

I was asked to do an interview for a public radio program years ago.  I had taken a photo of the Tippecanoe County Courthouse in Lafayette, and using an overlay (tracing paper), I interpreted it with pen and ink using lines and dots.  

About 50 years ago or more, my mother began to do decorative painting.  It was an outlet for her, something she loved to do, since she was going to give up teaching for the time being.  She used patterns, books, designs because she would readily admit, she was not good at drawing, but she was really good with color-and from my observation, it took some ability to properly place and stage the decorative material.  

Using the patterns she would transfer the material to wood items and then paint them using oil and acrylic paints.  Customers loved to buy these items and decorate their homes with them.  Dad built many items for mom, including little children's picnic tables that customers loved to buy and have for their children to play at-and family members of ours who had some of these tables played at them for hours and hours and hours.  This was art that served a purpose.  It was not “fine” art as people would call it, but many people bought it and loved it.  

When I was a kid, I liked certain items, but it wasn't always my thing.  When I was asked to do the interview regarding my pen and ink artwork, creating the ink work took many careful hours to get it right.  Ink is not so forgiving.  

I enlarged my photograph, put tracing paper over it, and “interpreted” it in ink using patterns of ink to interpret the subject.  Then, I used archival tape to tape the translucent paper to a white background.  I didn't frame it, but I could have.  Instead, I did several other interpretations of courthouse areas, and compiled them on a poster.  

I asked mom-what shall I tell this interviewer if he asks how I did it?  When he comes to the conclusion that all I did was “trace” it.  She told me to tell him I did an “overlay.”  

I went down to do the interview.  He had invited me.  I get there and he asked me about the work.  I told him that the work was an “overlay."  To which he abrasively (to my perception) asked, “Well, didn't you just trace it?” 

I explained.  My pen and ink work was the interpretation of the image, using lines, dots, stippling.  He seemed to dismiss what I was saying because I had used tracing paper to create part of the work.  His way seemed to indicate “that's not art.”  

I like to create visual imagery and with my music I like to create sound “imagery."  Humanity takes pleasure in what is good, true, and beautiful.  I think it is an extension of how our Creator made us.  I go to my garden, and I did not personally make those seeds able to grow, but when they do, those plants and vines are often aesthetically pleasing in their color, shape, and arrangement.  When I take a picture of them, they become “art,” or do they?  

When a famous photographer takes pictures using black and white, color, various lenses, equipment, angles, interpretation, when it is blown up and framed, the finished product is called “art” isn't it?  So I took my own photograph, placed TRACING paper over the picture, and then proceeded to interpret it in lines, dots, visually pleasing patterns (actual tracing isn't necessarily visually pleasing).  So wait, is photography not art? Is what I did in my interpretation of the subject not art?  Well, I suppose that's up to you to decide, isn't it? 

I asked the fellow who interviewed me when the interview would air.  I remember him saying that he wasn't certain that it “would air."  So why did he ask me to show up on time and make the interview in the first place, all of which I did? 

Over the years I've made some observations regarding what we call art and design.  

It was on an NPR program that I learned that the “old masters” often used what was called a camera obscura to create their great works.  In order to speedily create a painting they would project light onto a surface and TRACE IT! 

Interesting when I watched Mad Men a number of years ago (about the advertising business years ago), one of the comments involved an artist in their art department saying something to the effect of “we ought to call it the TRACING department" because tracing was a big part of it.  

Good art, decoration involves shape, and it can be a real challenge to get the shape right, because if it's not, the art doesn't look right.  There is a clear difference between an “unpleasant” shape and a visually pleasant shape.  An unpleasant interpretation simply doesn't look like the intended subject (unless we're talking about a caricature, which is meant to involve distortion).  

Here's another observation.  There is a woman named Betty Edwards that wrote a book called, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.”  Her premise is that ANYONE can learn to draw.  It is like learning to ride a bicycle.  She demonstrates in her book, I believe successfully, that her premise is true.  

So when I used the shapes and images beneath my tracing paper to guide me based on a photograph I took myself and design interpretations using lines and dots in configurations based on my own decisions in pen and ink, did my work somehow not become “art?”  Well, I guess that's up to you, isn't it?  So if you want to say, “That's not art." that's up to you.  

But I have to say, a lot of art involves the “tracing of shapes” either using a help like a camera obscura, a photograph, or doing it “freehand” as you make the artwork yourself.  

“Art” involves a lot of decisions and interpretation, and in the end it comes down to whether the work is “pleasing” or unpleasing, evocative, provocative, “relaxing”, or just blase. 

Here's something interesting regarding images that you see.  You want to realistically interpret a subject.  You want to make a 2D interpretation of something that is in 3D.  It means you are going to have to “flatten” what you see.  How do you begin to do that?  

To start out, you might use what is called a “picture plane.”  That is what a window is.   You could take a dry erase marker and “trace” the entire scene you are looking at onto the picture plane.  That is how you “flatten” the image to a 2D surface.  

Stand in a different position/put your eyes in a different position in relation to that scene, and all of a sudden you have a different scene.  Things have moved into your view that weren't there before, and other things have disappeared from your view.  That is what you call “perspective.”  

When you get out in nature and paint (called plein air “plain air” painting) you set up your equipment, your canvas, and then you paint “what you see.”  I have done plein air painting before.  I am not very good at it . . . yet.  At any rate, you may not have a window on which to trace your image between you and the subject, but you keep your eyes/head in the same position as you paint the shapes you see and  it maintains the perspective.  You mentally “trace” the image as you paint.  

Artists generally seek to create art that is visually pleasing.  Let's say that you have a beautiful scene in front of you, and right in the middle of it all is an eyesore, an enormous utility pole?  Do you have to paint the utility pole?  Artists will readily arrange thing in the scene to create a more “ideal” scene.  Indeed, when you arrive at a place to paint a scene there is FAR TOO MUCH DETAIL in that scene to paint, to put on the canvas.  So the art is a representation, an artist's vision of a particular scene, a particular subject.  So seeing that artists sometimes “trace” images (even the old masters did) and arranged scenery and subjects (in ways that may not exactly be what the viewer in a particular locale actually sees) is that art?  Yep, that's usually what they call it.  

As far as my subjects, my images, my photos, illustrations, my "art," I hope you enjoy them, and thanks for coming.  -Chris