Drawing—deciding what is significant detail, what can be suggested, and what needs dramatic development—is a skill that all designers need in order to develop their own ideas and share them with others. Many designers use drawing as the core of their work. Milton Glaser is such a designer.

Keeping a creative edge and searching for new opportunities for visual development are important aspects of a lively design practice. When Glaser felt an urge to expand his drawing vocabulary and to do more personally satisfying work, he found himself attracted to the impressionist artist Claude Monet. Glaser liked the way Monet looked: his physical characteristics expressed something familiar and yet mysterious. Additionally, Monet's visual vocabulary was foreign to Glaser whose work is more linear and graphic. While many designers would be intimidated by Monet's stature in the art world, Glaser was not because he was consciously seeking an opportunity for visual growth. In a sense, Glaser's drawings of Monet were a lark-an invention done lightly.

Glaser worked directly from nature, from photographs, and from memory in order to open himself to new possibilities. The drawings, forty-eight in all, were done over a year and a half and then were shown in a gallery in Milan. They became the catalog for a local printer who wanted to demonstrate his color fidelity and excellence in flexibility of vision: the selection of detail, the balancing of light and shadow, and the varying treatments of figure and background.

Drawing is a rich and immediate way to represent the world, but drawing can also illustrate ideas in partnership with