Dig Diary: Drawing Free Frank

by Colin Campbell

New Philadelphia proved to be an interesting site. The story, of course, was incredibly rich, and the site itself a treasure of American history. For my part, I think I'll look back on it as one of my favorite sites from the summer. Not all of the team would agree with me. But while they were out in rain gear watching their units getting waterlogged, I was having an entirely different experience. Most of my time on the site was spent with the historians, local experts, and the descendants of Mr. McWorter.

The very first drawing I was going to do for this site was undoubtedly my most important one. It was a portrait of Free Frank. This was very different than a drawing of a house or tool, or even an anonymous settler. In those drawings you still strive for emotion; you hope to show exertion, or hope, or fear, but there it could be the emotion of anyone. With Frank, I had an individual and his experiences to relate.

Mostly, my drawings are used as points of context for the historical discussions on camera — basically, a visual tool to help inform and to encourage dialogue in the experts. With this drawing, I was charged with giving a face to a man for whom there were living relatives — and a powerful family heritage. It was a real responsibility.

I was fortunate, though, that a talented living descendant of Frank sculpted a bust of him — based upon family faces — so I was given a solid starting point. Still, there is much in Frank's legacy that has to be brought into a drawing — intelligence, perseverance, charisma, integrity, and an incredible work ethic. I've learned in years of portrait drawing and painting that a face can be a window into a person and it's easy to get it wrong. I was pleased when Sandra and Pat WcWorter, Frank's descendants who had come to help us at the site, felt I had done a good job.