Day three hundred and fourteen: I came up with the idea for this simple study early this morning, when I was rowing on the Schuylkill River. It was very misty, and the water was very dark. Sometimes when I looked toward the shore, all I could see were subtle shades of gray upon gray upon […]
Tagged landscape, waterDay three hundred and thirteen: Back to the beach. I think I’ve made a couple of sunrise sketches from the Corcovado beach in southwest Costa Rica, but not a sunset. This impressionistic view of the Pacific was inspired by a photo I took years ago. I’ve always liked the interplay of orange and blue between […]
Tagged landscape, nature, oil, pastelDay 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 eleven: Turning the clocks back for Daylight Savings meant biking home along the Schuylkill River path after dark. The nighttime view was fresh and new, and I was mesmerized by the dark shapes of bridges beyond bridges, and lines of lights shimmering in black, still water. In this simplified study, I […]
Tagged architecture, oil, pastel, waterDay three hundred and ten: While cleaning the apartment today I was listening to inspirational music, and began contemplating themes of fear and faith and despair and hope. The lyrics to one song caught my ear, and remembering the expressionist woodcut I liked yesterday, I thought I would try making up a new picture. After […]
Tagged animal, bird, face, pastel, 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 seven: I made this sketch on my iPhone while riding the train from NYC to Philadelphia. I spent the entire day at the New York Print Fair, pouring over piles of prints in booths that look very much like this one. Prints on the walls, prints in boxes on tables, and even […]
Tagged iPhone, pencilDay three hundred and six: Today at work I was asked to track down the “precise title” of an artwork that has, for two decades, been titled “untitled.” A colleague and I joked how often we see artworks called “untitled” followed by parentheses and a descriptive title. So when, for lack of mental focus, I […]
Tagged abstract, oil, pastelDay 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 […]