This post is my brief and humble attempt to describe the important connection between art and language.
Most of my art performances have a motive, and the way that I’ve arrived at those motives is though language. I figure out what I want to communicate then describe it in words.
For example, my drawing of Dr Martin Luther King Jr elicited words such as…
- Stone
- Diligence
- Passion
- Perseverance
- Energy (kinetic)
- Spiritual
These are the words that I wanted to communicate within his portrait. Then I bring these intangible emotions into the tangible by asking the question. “How do you communicate stone in a person face, or passion, or energy or spiritual presence?”
This is where art and language coincide and why I feel it’s so important. Just look at all the greatest artwork throughout history and you will find art that has communicated something to the viewer beyond the tangible materials.
Art is our language. The purpose is to communicate with it using any means we can.

Previous Pocahontas Drawing Posts
- 5 Mindsets That Keep Us From Creating
- The Bridge Between Artistic Vision and the
- Showing Up
- Amazing Panels My Dad Made
- Do Something!
- Charcoal over Graphite
- Practicing Your Philosophy
- Light Doesn’t Matter, Form is Paramount
- The Board I Draw On
- Focus, Clips and Bad Drawings
- Managing Distractions
- Shading Tips With Pocahontas
- A Day of Challenges
- What is Your Art Ritual?
- Pocahontas Research, Going Beyond the Surface
Warm-up
The normal 15 minute warm-up in graphite.

The Natural Way to Draw
No work from the The Natural Way to Draw book today. I ran out of time but had a wonderful meeting with other artists on Zoom.
What went well, what was awesome! Celebrate It!
The meeting with other artists today went deep into the connection between art and language. I have much more respect for the written word and how I can use it to take my art further.
What needs work? What did you learn?
Energized tranquility over innervated anxiety.
How am I going to Optimize moving forward?
Keep focus on what is important and bring energy to it but don’t fly off the handle because you only have a short period of time in which to do it in.