If my oldest sister had lived a fuller lifespan, she would have been 80 years old this month, but my family lost her ten years ago to COPD. She was a visual artist, working on paper with pencil and charcoal, pen and ink, pastels, oils, and later in her artistic career, with various forms of collage. I am fortunate to own several of her works and cherish them.

A few years before she passed, we had a long discussion of the creative process. At the time, I was working a couple days a week for Writers In The Schools (WITS) in Houston, TX. I told my sister that I felt that writing and drawing were similar in process. Drafting was like sketching, darkening lines, erasing, starting a new sketch were initial revisions. Adding color, depth, shade, and brightness were further revisions. Finally, both visual art and writing have that final tweak stage before the work is complete.

She agreed there were definite parallels. She also said that composing music was different—that in art (or writing) one started with a big idea and filled in details, while with music, one started with a detail and built outward with variations to complete a work. In some ways, visual artists are “planners” (see Feb. 2023 blog post) and composers are “pantsers”. And, of course, nothing is 100% either way.

The year of that discussion, I was working with third graders in an inner-city school. I took one of my sister’s works with me to show them, allowing them to look closely to see the light pencil-sketch lines underneath the watercolor. I told them, “Today, you are sketching. Next week, we will add color and detail to your stories.” They understood and the following week, every student improved his or her story. Another week, I took a small abstract (also pen and ink with watercolor) to show them. I put it under the opaque projector so they could see it larger, asked them to imagine what they saw in the painting, and then write about it. I got some fantastic stories from them! I also, after asking the students’ permission, sent copies of a few of them to my sister. She got quite a kick out of that.

My dear sister, I wish you’d been around for your 80^th, so we could have had many more conversations.