Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [158]
[8] The appearance of Velázquez is also interesting. His eyes are focused outward here. They are not focused on what is going on around him. It is a steady stare. Also interesting is his confident stance. He was confident enough to place himself in the painting of the royal court. I think that Velázquez wants the king to give him the recognition he deserves by including him in the “family.” And the symbol on his vest is the symbol given to a painter by the king to show that his status and brilliance have been appreciated by the monarch. It is unknown how it got there. It is unlikely that Velázquez put it there himself. That would be too outright, and Velázquez was the type to give his messages subtly. Some say that after Velázquez’s death, King Philip IV himself painted it to finally give Velázquez the credit he deserved for being a loyal friend and servant. [The writer continues doing 10 on 1 and asking So what?; she arrives at three tentative theses (underlined).]
[9] I believe that Velázquez was very ingenious by putting his thoughts and feelings into a painting. He didn’t want to offend the king who had done so much for him. It paid off for Velázquez because he did finally get what he wanted, even if it was after he died. [The writer concludes and is now ready to redraft to tighten links between evidence and claims, formulate a better working thesis, and make this thesis evolve.]
Description to Analysis: The Exploratory Draft
The purpose of an exploratory draft is to use writing as a means of arriving at a working thesis that the next draft can more fully evolve. Most writers find that potential theses emerge near the end of the exploratory draft—which is the case in this student draft (see the three claims underlined in paragraph 8).
This is a good exploratory draft. The writer has begun to interpret details and draw plausible conclusions from what she sees, rather than just describing (summarizing) the scene depicted on the canvas or responding loosely to it with her unanalyzed impressions.
The paper is typical of an early draft in several ways:
It is written more for the writer as a form of inquiry than for readers. The writer reports her thoughts as they occur, but she doesn’t always explain how she arrived at them or how they connect to each other.
recognizable thesis doesn’t emerge until near the end (in paragraph 8).
The paper contains more than one potential thesis. The paper ignores the conflicts among its various theses and some of its evidence.
The writer tends to end paragraphs with promising observations and then walk away, leaving the observations undeveloped. Rather than draw out the implications of her observations, she halts her thinking too soon in order to move on to the next piece of evidence. See, for example, this writer’s repeated return to paragraph openings using “next” and “also,” which traps her into listing parallel examples rather than building connections among them. As we will illustrate later, the writer can remedy this problem by querying her observations with the question “So what?”
What is especially good about the draft is that it reveals the writer’s willingness to push on from her first idea (reading the painting as an endorsement of the divine right of kings, expressed by the light shining on the princess) by seeking out complicating evidence. This first idea does not account for enough of the evidence and is undermined by evidence that clearly doesn’t fit, such as the small size and decentering of the king and queen, and the large size and foregrounding of the painter himself.
Rather than ignoring these potentially troublesome details, the writer instead zooms in on them, making the painter’s representation of himself and of