Day two hundred and ninety-one: This afternoon I looked at the Rembrandt print from which I made yesterday’s sketch under a microscope. With the help of a few terrific paper conservators, we confirmed what I suspected: the print shows the effects of drypoint burr. Drypoint uses a sharp point to scratch the lines directly into […]
Tagged animal, oil, pastel, Rembrandt, watercolorDay two hundred and ninety: I spent a lot of time looking at impressions of Rembrandt prints today, seeking out particularly nice ones. One I had never seen before included a bearded man with a floppy brim hat. Close inspection showed that the shadow from the brim on the man’s face was made mostly with […]
Day two hundred and eighty-nine: Before I went to back to school to get an MA in Art History, I used to visit art museums, and whenever possible, take pictures. I was fascinated by the ways in which the art was installed and displayed, and I wanted to someday put together exhibitions of great art […]
Day two hundred and eighty-four: While helping my colleague, Brooks, set out artwork for a visiting class studying illustration, three small original drawings by Rockwell Kent caught my eye. They were made for the title pages of three volumes of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I became fascinated with the skill with which Kent was able […]
Day two hundred and eighty-three: Here’s a first: what I decide to sketch took a fraction of the time I thought it would! Usually it’s the other way around. This afternoon, a curator’s request sent me into a gallery of drawings, and although I had seen the drawing before, my recent work with pen and […]
Tagged nature, pen and inkDay two hundred and eighty-one: My friend Kurt’s drawings in pen and ink reminded me of some of my favorite landscapes by Domenico Campagnola. I was inspired poke about the “Pens” settings in the Corel Painter program, and I discovered one called “Real Variable Width Pen.” I found that if I made the “expression” for […]
Tagged Campagnola, landscape, natureDay two hundred and seventy-eight: We were studying several drawings by self-taught artists at work today. If I remember correctly, one was called “Man Talking to Fish in a Chefs Hat and Frogs.” Another was “Pink Man, Pink Bird, and Green Fish” (the fish was actually neon yellow). Many of the drawings used less traditional […]
Tagged animal, marker, pencilDay two hundred and seventy-three: Reading about the drawings and etched prints of Italian mannerist Parmigianino made me want to try a sketch after something he made in the sixteenth century. By chance, I found a snapshot I took with my iPhone of a drawing of an angel attributed to Parmigianino at the Philadelphia Museum […]
Tagged iPad, pencilDay two hundred and sixty-three: I wasn’t satisfied with Adam’s head in yesterday’s sketch, and so I tried a closer study of the profile from Dürer’s masterpiece. One of my favorite things about the entire engraving is how much Adam and Eve look like statues of Greek deities, perhaps Apollo and Venus. Of course, the […]
Tagged classicism, Dürer, face, pencilDay two hundred and sixty-two: Some of my favorites themes that have emerged over the course of the last 261 drawings include parrots, original prints, and classicism. This sketch incorporates a little of all three. It was inspired by a 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve made by German printmaker, Albrecht Dürer. Made between Dürer’s […]
Tagged art on art, bird, Dürer, face, figure study, parrot, pencil