This sketch is the seventy-fifth in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…
Day seventy-five: Belgian avant-garde artist, James Ensor, is a favorite of mine. Especially his etchings. I made this drawing of a detail from one of his earliest (1886) and most famous prints, La Cathédrale, from memory. In his etching a mass of people, including rows and rows of soldiers with sashes and tall hats, disintegrates into a haze of tiny dashes and dots. The tonal effect is phenomenal. So was the cramp in my hand as I tried to discover what Ensor’s process of drawing the hundreds of figures might have been like. He must have liked repetitive, methodical activity; sometimes Ensor hand colored the uniforms of the all the soldiers – especially the sashes – after the image was printed.
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