"Brian Plante - Drawn Words" - читать интересную книгу автора (Plante Brian)

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---- July 11 @ 9:00 p.m. EST Spider Robinson holds Callahan’s Key (The new
Callahan novel from Bantam). Find out more. Drawn
Words Brain Plante "Drawn Words" first appeared in the October 1998 issue.
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--- Ewen Muir held up the drawing. "It’s a chicken," he said. "A chicken?"
said Ewen’s mother, Mairi, making a puzzled face. "Well, maybe when it’s
finished. I don’t see anything there but a few squiggly lines." "But it is
finished. I’ve drawn just enough to see the chicken. All the rest is just
details." Ewen’s mother stared at the paper and shrugged. Why couldn’t she
see it, Ewen wondered. At the age of twelve, he was easily the best artist in
the county. The drawing he made of his father Gow and older brother Geordie
plowing the fields had won a first-place ribbon at the annual summer fair.
Even though Ewen’s talent wasn’t much use in the business of farming, his work
was so good that his parents could scarcely begrudge him the luxury of that
rarity of bartered goods, paper. "Gow," Mairi called to her husband in the
next room, "does this drawing look like a chicken to you?" Ewen’s father put
down the gouge he was carefully honing against a whetstone and came over to
look. Gow was a tall man, thin and wiry, with a laugh that belied his slight
frame. The seasons of hard toil on the farm had etched his face with wrinkles
beyond his forty years and his thick beard was showing traces of gray, but his
eyes still sparkled with vigor as he viewed the drawing. "Yes, I do see
something that might be a chicken when he’s done with it." "But I am
finished," Ewen said. "See, this pointy bit is the beak, and this loop is the
head, and this other one is the wing and the body. The extra little line
underneath is supposed to be a leg." "Nonsense," Gow said. "A line or two
can’t be a chicken. You have to add feathers, connect up those open spaces and
color it in." Ewen had been afraid they wouldn’t understand. He had drawn
chickens before. Good ones. And cows and horses and trees and houses and
people. It was easy to draw things the same way other folks who had the talent
did it. He was trying to do something new. "But you see it, don’t you?" Ewen
said. "If you can see the chicken with just a couple of lines, then it’s
enough." Ewen’s brother Geordie came away from the basket-weaving he was
working on to see what the fuss was about. "That’s surely no chicken I’ve ever
seen, Ewie." "Yes," Mairi agreed. "I think I can make it out now, but why
don’t you fill in the rest of it so it looks like a normal drawing?" "But
that takes too long," Ewen said. "If I draw just a few lines that can
represent the whole chicken, without having to draw every single feather, then
I can draw it in just a few seconds." Worry lines appeared on Gow’s
forehead. "Why would you ever want to be able to draw a chicken so quickly?"
Mairi asked. "It’s not just chickens," Ewen said, turning over the paper to
show a few more sketches underneath. "See, here I have a shape for a cow, a
horse, and a pig. This pointy box is the shape for ‘house’ and this
one–" "It’s a man," said Gow. "Yes, yes," Ewen said, excited. "Finish them,
boy," Gow said sternly. "These are not proper drawings, and I don’t care how
quickly you can render them. A drawing of a man needs a proper face and hair
and fingers. This is just a circle and a couple of lines, like a baby would
make. There’s no need to skimp on your art. Remember, anything worth doing is
worth doing well." Ewen’s smile was replaced by a puzzled look. "But father,
these aren’t regular drawings. I think of them more as words drawn out on