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 brown ink made me look more closely at one by Luigi Sabatelli (Italian; 1772-1850) titled The Madness of Orlando. I noticed an intensely detailed tree trunk, and realized that emulating Sabatelli’s pen work would be great practice. I chose a very small area to copy, so I could really focus on how the lines functioned. I didn’t want to just see degrees of light and dark, which I tend to translate into scribbles if left to my own devices. The sketch you see here is the result of my experiment. I think the next step will be to zoom out a bit, and try to really create the subject, while employing a system of curved hatches, dashes, and dots similar to Sabatelli’s. He was a talented young man, and made his large, masterful drawing around the age of 23. Check out the 18th-century original at http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/93174.html?mulR=3736|1.
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