Day three hundred and nineteen: Tonight I felt like playing with ink and wash in an old master style. So I found an 18th-century drawing in the Thrivent Financial Collection, and tried to imitate a small part of it. What you see here is the head and shoulders of Joseph, as drawn by the Venetian draftsman and painter, Pietro Antonio Novelli (1729-1804).
Tagged art on art, face, pen and ink, watercolor
Day three hundred and eighteen: Since I usually work with prints, I guess I’ve tended to make sketches after them. There are, however, illuminated manuscripts in the collection at work, which date to a time before printing. At least in the West (the Chinese were using woodblocks for printing as early as the 9th century). Today’s drawing is based on a detail of St. Anne (Mary’s mother) in a French book of hours. Parisian, I believe, but I forget the exact date. In honor of the medium, I tried using the gouache setting on Corel Painter, and hunted for some metallic gold paint, which I never really found. I love the blue background of the original, which I imagine was probably expensive to produce, and has lasted 600 years or so.
Tagged art on art, face, gouache
Day three hundred and seventeen: With no plan to draw any particular subject, I started to doodle a bit of what was sitting right in front of me. This is the typical view I see while making the daily sketch. Lately, Caprica has decided to be involved (entangled?) in the process, and either pokes around on the keyboard (which doesn’t seem to interrupt what I’m doing on the drawing pad too much), or more tediously, sits on the thumb that holds the digital pen. I don’t even want to try and sketch that!
Tagged landscape, pencil, self portrait
Day three hundred and sixteen: This is where the sketches all began. Last December I was in an airplane leaving Minneapolis at the break of day, and found myself thinking about my friend Sara’s daily sketches. I started doodling what I could see out the window with a pencil, and made a note of the horizontal pattern created by “night, red lights, pink dawn, snow, ice, light.” I remember my original intent was to create an abstracted version of the runway landscape. Tonight, while browsing through my iPhone pics, I ran across a snapshot I made of the original drawing. Here is an adaptation of the black and white doodle, made around 11 months later.
Tagged landscape, pastel
Day three hundred and fifteen: On Friday afternoons we’ve been hosting a printmaking class in the study room. Today we were looking at some prints by Mauricio Lasansky, and one in particular caught my attention. This sketch is a study of a small detail from one of his intaglio prints, for which the copper plate was engraved, gauged out to create white areas, and etched using a needle, soft ground, and aquatint. That wasn’t enough, however, because the artist also scraped and burnished the plate to achieve the desired final result. My attempt to emulate Lasansky’s image included the use of various pencils, oil pastel, and conte crayon, but doesn’t do the original justice in terms of form and depth of tone. Still, by trying to sketch it, I learned just how much detail and variety Lasansky worked into the plate. What you see here is supposed to be an abstracted horse’s head, but my proportions are off, and so I’m not sure it looks like much of anything but shapes and patterns.
Tagged abstract, animal, conte crayon, oil, pastel, pencil
Day three hundred and fourteen: I came up with the idea for this simple study early this morning, when I was rowing on the Schuylkill River. It was very misty, and the water was very dark. Sometimes when I looked toward the shore, all I could see were subtle shades of gray upon gray upon gray. One thing about getting up early and rowing, is that it makes me quite tired by the end of the day. So I didn’t take too much time creating a realistic view, but rather abstracted it a bit, just to see if I could simulate the visual effect.
Tagged landscape, water
Day three hundred and thirteen: Back to the beach. I think I’ve made a couple of sunrise sketches from the Corcovado beach in southwest Costa Rica, but not a sunset. This impressionistic view of the Pacific was inspired by a photo I took years ago. I’ve always liked the interplay of orange and blue between the clouds in the sky and the ocean waves. And of course it’s always fun to make a great big sun, low in the sky, burning yellow and white.
Tagged landscape, nature, oil, pastel
Day three hundred and twelve: Today’s sketch is based on a detail in a mid-16th century drawing in the Thrivent Financial Collection. The artist or artists that made the drawing are essentially unknown, though it is generally in the style of Michelangelo. My sketch is not, however, as I used a pencil instead of ink, and my draftsmanship is nowhere near as honed as the Italian artists that were working in Rome and Florence in the 1500s. I make several lines where there should be one, or where subtle wash should create the shading. But the general mannerist shape of the face is similar to the original.
Tagged art on art, face, pencil
Day three hundred and eleven: Turning the clocks back for Daylight Savings meant biking home along the Schuylkill River path after dark. The nighttime view was fresh and new, and I was mesmerized by the dark shapes of bridges beyond bridges, and lines of lights shimmering in black, still water. In this simplified study, I modified the sky to emulate the ambient glow of the city.
Tagged architecture, oil, pastel, water
Day three hundred and ten: While cleaning the apartment today I was listening to inspirational music, and began contemplating themes of fear and faith and despair and hope. The lyrics to one song caught my ear, and remembering the expressionist woodcut I liked yesterday, I thought I would try making up a new picture. After I sketched the face and the bird (I know no animal more fearless than a conure), I struggled with what to put in the blank space to the right. (This is where fear was supposed to go.) In the end I paraphrased the lyrics. I figure we can all use a little reminder that fear has no power over truth, peace, hope, and love.
Tagged animal, bird, face, pastel, pencil