Why is a drawing of a photograph more fun to look at than the photograph itself?

So what's the difference between a photograph and art? Why does a drawing of a photograph excite us more than the photograph itself?

I was trying to describe why this works with my student, Klaudia Rixman, an extremely talented 14 year old artist. My point was that when we draw something, we distill it. And when the steps, processes, layers and DECISIONS we make are visible, it is the interplay and layering of those decisions that are exciting.

I recently found a drawing demo video by artist Erik Gist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQdOgAD_Bc

What excited me and made me want to click on it was the image of his drawing on the link:

Beautiful, right?

Here is the photo he used:

Great range of tone value. Very clear and dynamic.

So why is the drawing so much more fun to look at? 

Because the DRAWN image is broken down into CLEARY visible value areas.

Here is the most obvious example of what I'm talking about. Take a look at a comparison between these two areas of the photo and the drawing:

Hone in on the FLATLY DRAWN value areas of the drawing, especially the lower bicep muscle (the one in the middle of the arm). 

You can clearly see the shaded shape of that area as a GRAPHIC ELEMENT, rather than a smoothly shaded, precise copy of the graduated value in the photograph. He has INTERPRETED that area of the photograph with a single, flat tonal swatch. Elegant.

You can SEE the decision that was made. You can absolutely empathize with the shape of that drawn bicep value area, and because we can see the INTERPRETATION, it is the interpretation that we ENJOY. We can see how this whole image has been broken down with a number of drawing techniques, and those techniques were used to interpret shape, light and space.

What is enjoyable about art? It is our ability to see how another mind has INTERPRETED something we visually understand. We all share visual experiences, and we all have a commonality of visual anatomy and brain function that allows us to interpret someone else's interpretation. The same way that we can understand shared language, we can - even more easily and universally - understand shared visual interpretation.

Tapping into this shared ability to interpret our shared reality is where the joy and the value of art comes from.