sketches

Day three hundred and four: I have a new favorite print by the 16th-century German printmaker, Albrecht Dürer. It’s an early etching, and one of the handful he made in what was, at the time, an entirely new print medium. I saw an impression of the untitled print for the first time at work today. The somewhat disjointed composition is unusual, with no apparent narrative or easily interpreted iconography. Perhaps Dürer was practicing his hand with an etching need, and experimenting with several figures on the plate. One face in the detail I’ve imitated here seems to hover in a black void with no body. Its ghoulish grimace and empty eyes — just above the man ripping at his own hair — seemed particularly appropriate for a Halloween sketch!