sketches

Day 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 the pen “pressure,” then I it was particularly versatile, and I was able — for the first time so far this year — to make a tree roughly in Campagnola’s style. Even though he made fairly loopy leaves, my naturally sloppy sketching style makes the whole thing messier. However, I think if I deliberately practiced cleaning up my lines I might be able to emulate the range and depth of forms achieved by the 16th-century Italian master. At least when the subject is a tree. I’m not so sure about people… or anything else for that matter… Anyway, here’s to pens with real variable width!