sketches

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 to create these figures with only a few carefully painted lines of white. It took me more than one attempt at nearly every line in this sketch, and in some cases my “real variable pen” wasn’t variable enough to render the width and narrowness necessary within a single stroke. Regardless, I’m delighted that I was better at emulating Kent’s style than I thought I would be. Of course, if I wasn’t copying, I’d never be able to pull off something this sophisticated and simple.