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mountain and lake study

This sketch is the sixty-ninth in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-nine: Well, tonight at 10:00 PM after a long productive day I felt entirely wiped out, but I still hadn’t made a sketch. I didn’t even have the energy pick a subject. While flipping through a book of art by D. Y. Cameron, I saw an etched print he made of Ben Lomond reflected in a lake. His print really looks nothing like this, which is a quick study of an imaginary mountain. I think it looks better as a thumbnail than a full drawing. In hindsight, I wish I had made the reflection darker. But it’s done and it’s done today, which is what counts.

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2011 03 10 quick study Comments (0) Permalink

contrapposto

This sketch is the sixty-eighth in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-eight: My favorite text message today came from a friend looking for a word that was on the tip of his tongue: “What is the term used for the technique developed by the Greeks pertaining to how parts of the body shift in response to other parts. For instance, when I shift my weight to the right leg, the left hip drops…” I was pleased that I knew the answer off the top of my head. Contrapposto, Italian for “opposed.” It’s just the sort of thing I should be practicing with my figure drawing. These two sketches are studies of a Doryphoros sculpture at the Vatican Museum in Rome (a Roman copy after the Greek original by Polykleitos). There’s another Doryphoros at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, often with art students sitting around it sketching.

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2011 03 09 artist tribute
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ben ledi

This sketch is the sixty-seventh in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-seven: D. Y. Cameron was a Scottish artist who painted and made etched prints of landscapes in his native country. My drawing here was inspired by a picture of Ben Ledi by Cameron in pencil, conte crayon, and watercolor, made c. 1911. I used charcoal for my version of Ben Ledi, and blended it heavily to create a similar, if not identical effect for the water. The mountain is in Perthshire, Scotland, and is well known through Sir Walter Scott’s poem “Lady of the Lake.”

‘Twere long to tell what steeds gave o’er,
As swept the hunt through Cambusmore;
What reins were tightened in despair,
When rose Benledi’s ridge in air;
Who flagged upon Bochastle’s heath,
Who shunned to stem the flooded Teith,—
For twice that day, from shore to shore,
The gallant stag swam stoutly o’er.
Few were the stragglers, following far,
That reached the lake of Vennachar;
And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
The headmost horseman rode alone.

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2011 03 08 artist tribute
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courage

This sketch is the sixty-sixth in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-six: I was contemplating this quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and wanted to create a composition that incorporated the text with an image. This is what happened as I started drawing while thinking about German Expressionist woodcuts, particularly those of Franz Marc.

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2011 03 07 artist tribute
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johnny cash

This sketch is the sixty-fifth in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-five: My friends Dori J. and John D. each sent me a link to http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com, a site where anyone can draw a frame from the video “Ain’t No Grave” by Johnny Cash. This is my submission of frame #290, which is pending approval. The site is amazing, and definitely worth exploring. There are tons of great drawings of all sorts. And you can contribute your own too. I suspect I will be back to make some more myself.

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2011 03 06 artist tribute
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three figures

This sketch is the sixty-fourth in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-four: This afternoon I was delighted to learn that one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance made some pretty messy drawings, a result of his exploratory approach to composition. Even more pleasing was hearing Aiden Weston-Lewis describe “claw hands” as a fairly salient feature of figures drawn by Titian. Facial features are often equally obscure. I made this drawing after one that has recently been attributed to Titian, and which is currently on view at the MIA in “Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting” (which everyone in the  Twin Cities should go see).

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2011 03 05 artist tribute
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math signs

This sketch is the sixty-third in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-three: This evening I was taking a math skills assessment to determine what kinds of problems I need to study especially for the GRE. While I got less than the maximum number of problems wrong to “pass,” I found I need work on nearly all types of problems. Sometimes when I look at a problem I see a chaos composed of unintelligible signs, and it takes me a few minutes to dig through the deep recesses of my memory to recall Algebra and Geometry classes from High School. My instinctive response to Algebra operations is usually “irrelevant!” But only because I have little clue at what I’m looking. This doodle incorporates some of the problems and answers (write and wrong) on that assessment. I was thinking of Jasper John’s drawing of the number two at the MIA, and his exploration of surface.

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2011 03 04 quick study Comments (3) Permalink

study of egon schiele’s standing girl

This sketch is the sixty-second in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-two: My friend Christopher posed a little challenge this morning, suggesting Egon Schiele’s “Standing Girl” in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts might make a good drawing exercise. I paged through a book of art by Schiele, thinking I’d pick a different drawing by him, but this particular one turned out to be the best. I decided to just try drawing her head. Schiele’s simplicity at first seemed daunting, but I took my time and worked out the shapes (thank God for the eraser tool). It was really enjoyable to work on. Thank you, Christopher. Great idea!

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2011 03 03 artist tribute Comments (1) Permalink

madonna

This sketch is the sixty-first in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty-one: Sometimes at the end of the day when I haven’t made my sketch I have no idea what to draw. A quick flip through a book of prints by Munch is almost always sure to get me going. This drawing is inspired by a 1903 lithograph by Munch. His “Madonna” appears a bit younger, more innocent, and happier; my unpracticed hand struggles to render subtle qualities of character or mood. Still, it turned out better than I expected.

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2011 03 02 artist tribute
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jekyll and hyde

This sketch is the sixtieth in a 365-day challenge to draw a picture a day, every day, for a year…

Day sixty: This afternoon I was looking at William Blake’s series of engravings for the Book of Job, and his integration of illustration and text. Unrelated, I was also thinking about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and decided to incorporate a bit of text from Robert Louis Stevenson’s story into a picture. Not a particularly lighthearted subject, but I had a lot of fun working it out. Particularly scratching in the figures with white on black and creating the text.

Beware the beast within!

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2011 03 01 composition Comments (1) Permalink