sketches

Day two hundred and seven: A colleague at work showed me a book with pictures mimicking heads designed by the 17th-century French academy artist Charles le Brun. The original illustrations were made to demonstrate “Heads Representing the Various Passions of the Soul as They are Expressed in the Human Countenance.” I couldn’t resist making snapshots of a couple of them, as candidates for today’s sketch. This one, titled “Anger,” went along with a description that observed “the Eye brows are sometimes elevated & sometimes sunk down equally” and lips “making a cruel and disdainful grin.” I enjoyed copying part of the face, and imitating the controlled hatch marks of the engraving. Sometimes I lost patience with it though, and resorted to my own chicken-scratching way of filling in areas of shadow.

Day two hundred and three: My sketch today is based on an artwork that was based on an artwork. Confused? Abraham Blootling made four engraved prints of lions around 1665 for a series titled Variae Leonum Icones. Each sheet pictures two lions originally designed by Peter Paul Rubens. I’ve found six of them so far — including the one I sketched here — in Ruben’s painting of Daniel in the Lion’s Den on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. If you click the link to find the lion’s face, you’ll notice that Blooteling’s engraving reverses the image, an effect inherent in the printing process unless the artist purposefully flips the design on the copper plate.

Day two hundred and one: Today I saw a drawing titled Haystacks by Vincent van Gogh. I am so accustomed to seeing his paintings, that I was surprised to see something clearly by his hand, but without the vibrant color. In the 1888 original, van Gogh used reed pen, quill and ink, over graphite. I used a digital drawing pad to try and emulate the subtle and beautiful variation in tone produced by all the lines and dots. I would bet that my sketch has less than half the dashes and points and splotches that van Gogh made, and I must admit that I cheated by adding broad swatches of tone on a lower layer, and smoothed it out with “water.”