I have watched Bruce Morser draw for over 30 years, and I still don’t understand how he manages to create the illusion of realism in his work. Full disclosure — I am Bruce’s wife and so have witnessed an extensive range of subjects he’s drawn during his career as an illustrator, artist and teacher. Many people have seen his work in national publications, but only recently has his artwork been exhibited locally. As one of six commissioned pieces of art, Morser’s “Quercus Alba — White Oak” will be auctioned Saturday night at “Vive La France,” Vashon Allied Arts’ auction.
When Morser teaches classes on drawing, illustration, and especially on creativity, he helps students move away from drawing what they think they know toward what they actually see. The artist said it can sometimes take a while to be present with what one is truly seeing.
“I can feel myself literally stop thinking and shift more to feeling,” Morser said. “I look for patterns of light and dark that is the essence of the overall picture. I look with my eyes, and what I see turns into a feeling in my hand.”
When he is not illustrating images for companies that run the gamut from National Geographic to NASA, Morser spends time observing and understanding how things work. He said he does not think about what to draw; rather he chooses a subject based on a strong feeling he gets when he looks at it with focused attention — as he did with the oak tree.
“I have this feeling about old trees, which I think almost everyone has,” Morser said. “Then I start to look for the patterns. … I’m trying to find the ‘it-ness’ that defines it, which means I have to just look for a while.”
Morser then takes, or finds, numerous photographs and builds his drawing from all the visual pieces that add up to the strong feeling. Using plastic lead on film, a technique he developed in his illustration business, Morser creates a range of values with “dark darks” and “light lights” to form a fine texture.
Despite his honed techniques, Morser will tell his students that drawing is less of a skill and more of a state of mind. He also says that in drawing — as in life — tedium is helpful, while boredom is not. Rendering all the details in his images can feel tedious, he said, but he believes that the tedium is positive as it indicates he’s in a state of awareness. When he gets bored he stops, because “people can feel the boredom in a drawing.”
Though Morser earned his Masters of Fine Arts in painting, his true passion, he said, lies with drawing.
“I used to paint until I realized I was just drawing with paint. For the past 30 years, I switched almost entirely to drawing. I love to look at drawings, and I love to draw.”
