This morning Lou asked me to draw an airplane. (Note the paper above has a light pencil sketch on it by me that we are recycling.)

I said that sounded great, and what we needed to do was to look at an airplane. So I went to the computer, googled “747 airplane” and set the search to large images only.

So together we looked at this and I asked Lou to help me draw it. I started with the body and wings and asked her to describe what else she saw. I encouraged her to do some of the drawing too, which can be frustrating for her since the mind is a few steps ahead of the hand.

Almost every artist out there looks at reference. Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas… If they don’t look at reference it’s because they have practiced so much that they can do it out of their head. Even then it is usually a very cartoonish style and not realistic. For realism, even the best artists around look at life.