In a novel especially,
the characters must be drawn with the greatest care. They must be made
genuine personages. Yet the ill-taste of "putting your friends into a
story" is only less pronounced than the bad art or drawing characters
purely out of the imagination. There is no art in the slavish copying
of persons in real life. Yet it is practically impossible to create
genuine characters in the mind without reference to real life.
The simple solution would seem to be to follow the method of the painter
who uses models, though in so doing he does not make portraits.
There was a time in drawing when the school of "out-of-the-headers"
prevailed, but their work was often grotesque, imperfect, and sometimes
utterly futile in expressing even the idea the artist had in mind.
The opposite extreme in graphic art is photography. The rational use
of models is the happy mean between the two. But the good artist always
draws with his eye on the object, and the good writer should write with
his eye on a definite conception or some real thing or person,
from which he varies consciously and for artistic purpose.
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