Day three hundred and twenty: This afternoon I was delighted to see an etching by German artist Hans Lautensack (1524 – 1566) is part of the PMA’s collection. I’m particularly fond of the style of pine trees that appear in prints by Lautensack, which imitate those by Albrecht Altdorfer of the s0-called Danube school. I […]
Day three hundred and nineteen: Tonight I felt like playing with ink and wash in an old master style. So I found an 18th-century drawing in the Thrivent Financial Collection, and tried to imitate a small part of it. What you see here is the head and shoulders of Joseph, as drawn by the Venetian […]
Tagged art on art, face, pen and ink, watercolorDay three hundred and fifteen: On Friday afternoons we’ve been hosting a printmaking class in the study room. Today we were looking at some prints by Mauricio Lasansky, and one in particular caught my attention. This sketch is a study of a small detail from one of his intaglio prints, for which the copper plate […]
Tagged abstract, animal, conte crayon, oil, pastel, pencilDay three hundred and twelve: Today’s sketch is based on a detail in a mid-16th century drawing in the Thrivent Financial Collection. The artist or artists that made the drawing are essentially unknown, though it is generally in the style of Michelangelo. My sketch is not, however, as I used a pencil instead of ink, […]
Tagged art on art, face, pencilDay three hundred and nine: A very quick day trip back to the NY print fair brought me face to face with what might be my favorite German Expressionist woodcut. I’d never seen it before, but when I was going through a box of prints I immediately liked. By Erich Heckel, and titled “Wolken” (meaning […]
Tagged abstract, art on art, Heckel, landscape, pastelDay three hundred and eight: Looking again at early etchings, this sketch is based on a detail from one by Hans Burgkmair the Elder. As far as historians know he only made one etching around 1520 of a scene with Venus and Mercury. I saw an impression of the print at the fair yesterday, and […]
Tagged Burgkmair, face, pencilDay three hundred and five: Still looking at the same etching by Dürer, this peculiar, melancholy face appears near the upper right of the picture. What I am really fascinated by, however, is the tiny landscape Dürer scratched into farthest reaches of the corner. While it is not unusual to see a distant hill or […]
Day three hundred and four: I have a new favorite print by the 16th-century German printmaker, Albrecht Dürer. It’s an early etching, and one of the handful he made in what was, at the time, an entirely new print medium. I saw an impression of the untitled print for the first time at work today. […]
Tagged Dürer, face, pencilDay two hundred and ninety-seven: A busy evening left me little time or energy for sketching, so I wanted to do something simple and brief. But I needed a subject… Gathering up the recycling, I was reminded of two drawings on view at the PMA by The Dufala Brothers, a pair of environmentally conscious contemporary […]
Tagged watercolorDay two hundred and ninety-five: Poking about photos I’ve taken in art museums, I ran across several from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. At the time, in 2009, I remember being surprised by his color choices in several of the paintings, and the bold use of brushstroke Munch used to blend the colors on […]
Tagged abstract, face, munch, oil, pastel