draftsmanship

“He had studied draftsmanship, so was sent to Kyoto to do architectural drawings.”

The mere fact of his draftsmanship impresses his friend and fellow artist Glenn Ligon, part of the same generation of Black artists that Golden said “redefined the space of the contemporary art world.”

“Those artists have a rich iconography and high-quality draftsmanship,” he said of the Surrealists.

He spoke no English, she recalled in an oral history interview, but was impressed by her draftsmanship and taught her and a classmate free of charge for two years.

Taylor recently painted a portrait of a bespectacled Guest, and he added that Guest’s early stints doing illustrations gave him a crucial base in draftsmanship.