THE LENGTH OF YOUR LEASH

James Williamson for the Saturday Evening Post (1949)

There is a gap, at least 12 tugboats wide, between what an artist can imagine and what that artist can actually put on paper.

It does no good for working artists to imagine a picture they lack the technical skill to implement. Famed illustrator Seymour Chwast confessed that he avoids pictures that require craftsmanship and a drawing ability I do not have. Elwood Smith maintains that his inability to draw the images he envisions forces him to be more creative: if I cant draw it, I struggle to come up with a different idea thats invariably more original."

Lots of artists today seem limited by their skills to a depressingly short menu of alternatives. Many pictures are reduced to elementary line drawings with basic compositions (or... [via Illustration Art]