sketches

Day three hundred and thirty-six: Ever since I studied 16th-century Italian woodcuts intensely about a year ago, I’ve been enchanted by the bark-crusted trunks of twisting trees and stumps. I have a theory that every great artist has made one or two during the course of their career. This evening I visited the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art’s annual student print fair, and encountered a new woodcut based on old styles (sort of a cross between 16th-century Italian Renaissance and 20th-century German Expressionist). At only $8.00, I simply couldn’t pass it up. The sketch you see here, based on a detail of the tree in my new print, is a tribute to the role prints have played for centuries: a cheap way to distribute fine art, and for artists to promote themselves and exchange visual ideas.