Artistic Creation
About Artistic Creation
A lightning-sketch artist draws a girl’s head, lifts the drawing off the paper, and sets it on a small table, where it becomes a living woman’s head. He keeps drawing. The body arrives piece by piece.
Cast & crew
More about Artistic Creation
Walter R. Booth directed it for Robert W. Paul in 1901. One timing is 1 minute 15 seconds. Another listing says 2 minutes. Booth is the only cast name on the catalog record. Paul’s Animatograph Works is the company.
Themes
Making
Booth uses the lightning sketch, a music-hall act, and then a substitution so the chalk head can be replaced by a woman. The rest of the body is the same gag repeated.
Reviews
Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline calls the short a cautionary tale about the responsibility of the artist, and of men, toward what they create.
Look
The trick is a stopped camera: the drawing leaves the sheet, and a woman’s head is on the table where the paper was.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print of about a minute and a quarter survives.
Notes
- The head is finished and brought to life before the torso, arms, or legs exist.
- Michael Brooke, for BFI Screenonline, reads it as a caution about what an artist, and a man, owes a figure he has made.
- It is one of the early films in which a drawing gets up and becomes a person.
- A Commons copy runs under the 1901 title.
Scenes
- The drawn head is peeled off the paper and set on the table as a living face.
- He draws the rest of her, part by part.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Artistic Creation (1901) - yt.webm)
