study of a bust

I made this right after high school when I was "messing around" with styles. I still believe there are a lot of ways to express line in art without trying to render a photograph- like drawing. Line is an expression of the soul, it is like a chord change in music. If your soul is empty an devoid of a need to express itself then feel free to hang your hat on the peg of a lifeless-photo rendering. The greatest draftsman of all time-- Raphael understood how to give life to his line. I cant understand why people ignore his drawings and try to ape an exact copy of reality. As magritte said "this is not a pipe" he meant that it was a painting of a pipe. A drawing is not the thing, it is a visual representation of the "thing." In art school everyone started to use these little "mechanical pencils" because they were not able to achieve a sufficiently mechanical looking art with a regular pencil.