Day two hundred and fifty-eight: Today I was helping a curator from another museum who was studying 18th-century French etchings, and we both appreciated a charming landscape with an empty boat by Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-1786). Shortly after we were browsing a book of Rembrandt (1606-1669) etchings, and came across one of the same boat in […]
Tagged landscape, Rembrandt, Watelet, water, watercolorDay two hundred and fifty-one: More playing around with media today: this time a mix of black pen and dusky watercolor washes to create an imaginary mountain lake at nightfall. This study was inspired by my memory of landscape etchings by D. Y. Cameron.
Tagged cameron, landscape, pen and ink, watercolorDay two hundred and fifty: When I was a kid, around fifth grade or so, watercolors were my favorite way to paint. When I started this blog, and began using the Corel Painter 11, it was one of the first “brush categories” I tested. And I hated it. The colors diffused all over in a […]
Tagged animal, art on art, watercolorDay two hundred and forty-eight: An indirect request from a colleague at work steered me toward sketches after photographs by Paul Strand. I wasn’t very satisfied with the final product of yesterday’s study of “Rebecca,” but I did enjoy applying and blending color to create shape and surface. I thought I’d try one more, so […]
Tagged face, oilDay two hundred and forty-seven: I’ll be the first to admit that, aside from the pose, the woman in my sketch doesn’t look like the woman in the photograph I used as a model. The original is a Palladium print at the Getty Museum of a photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1923. It’s titled […]
Tagged face, oilDay two hundred and forty-five: Today a visiting artist asked to study a painting on paper by the Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), whose work explored cubism, expressionism, and surrealism at different times. My sketch here is inspired by Fermata, painted by Klee during a brief period in the early 1930s. The original is much […]
Day two hundred and forty-three: My work this afternoon led me to stare closely at a large pastel by Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), an activity which led, in turn, to a discussion with my co-worker Sharon about creating art with pastels. I commented that I had never really tried it – even on my digital […]
Tagged art on art, landscape, pastelDay two hundred and forty-one: This afternoon I went sleuthing in storage because I knew something was amiss. Two original woodblocks carved by printmaker Howard Norton Cook (American, 1901-1980) were listed in the collection catalog with the same title, and I needed to see which really belonged to an impression of Hotel New Yorker. I […]
Day two hundred and forty: I’m a fan of German Expressionist, Emil Nolde’s, intaglio printmaking, particularly for the sense of layers he achieve when working with etching and aquatint together. My study today is based on a detail from his 1911 print Schriftgelehrte (Scribes), which is one of my many favorites in the Thrivent Financial […]
Tagged art on art, face, nolde, oilDay two hundred and thirty-seven: When this week began, if you had asked me what new thing I would learn about prints, I would not have mentioned the Japanese printmaker Utagawa Kunisada (aka Toyokuni III). That, however, is one of the wonderful parts of my job: every day some unexpected piece of paper requires a […]
Tagged art on art, face, pencil, woodcut