08.01.2026
“Don’t use painting and drawing! Just one word!” my son Christopher told me.
He helped me create this homepage and spent hours patiently explaining to his old dad how to use TypeScript, React, and all that kind of stuff.
For a moment, we left technique behind and talked about content. And he complained a lot about the first version of my About page.
“I just can’t,” I replied. “It’s not the same.”
I never say anything, but it always makes me shudder when I’m sitting somewhere, sketchbook on my lap, people passing by, and a father says to his son:
“Look! He is painting.”
No! I am not. I am drawing.
What’s the point? Actually, there are two.
One is obvious. You draw a line; you paint a small area of colour. What does that mean for a drawing? Look around you. There are (almost) no lines. There is the edge of a house: the house is ochre, the background is a light blue sky. If you paint it, the edge of the house is simply where the ochre ends and the light blue begins. Easy.
But when you draw, that edge becomes a dark line on white paper. That sounds normal — but it isn’t. It is a transformation. We don’t notice it because we are so used to it. Our mind translates the line back into the edge of a house when looking at the drawing. That’s why we see a house at all.
I have often wondered whether people with no exposure to representational images might not be able to translate lines back into edges at all, simply because they are not used to seeing drawings.
But apart from drawing being a process of transforming what you see into lines, there is another important point. The pen does not run out of ink. At least, not that quickly. (Don’t mention quills and ink wells…) When you draw, you are in a flow.
When you paint, the colour sits on the palette, in the paint box. You load a tiny amount onto your brush, place it on the canvas, and seconds later it’s gone. Painting is shovelling colour. Which means you constantly have to interrupt your process. You are not in a flow.
I don’t want to judge. I still don’t know which medium I prefer. I only want to say this: painting and drawing are not the same. Not at all!
It’s like saying, “Oh, he is playing the guitar,” when he is actually playing the flute.
“All right, I understand,” my strict teacher finally agreed. "Still, the rest of your About page is much too long! But think of it: you could write down what you just told me as an article.”
P.S.: Check out his homepage here — he is a remarkable photographer.
