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Sketchbooks
Jane Ford: "What is your advice to aspiring political cartoonists?"
Oliphant: "Draw every day."
-- UVA Today, 2009
The archives contains 186 sketchbooks, mostly 6 x 4 in. pads, which Oliphant began saving in the 1980s. The sampling of sketchbook drawings on display here "hatch" satirical scenarios for a range of characters from the Reagan to Obama administrations.
The sketchbook is a testing ground -- a vehicle or well-spring for Oliphant's energetic, non-committal drawing technique. In it, the artist's imagination can flow through and respond to the movement of the pencil -- literally, as Paul Klee said, take a "walk with a line," working out problems of concept, composition, and expression to arrive at new pictorial discoveries. In this way, a line of thought becomes synonymous with a drawn line. Once when asked whether the drawing or the idea was most important to the political cartoon, Oliphant refused to choose: "I say it's both." |