sketches

Day two hundred and ninety-seven: A busy evening left me little time or energy for sketching, so I wanted to do something simple and brief. But I needed a subject…  Gathering up the recycling, I was reminded of two drawings on view at the PMA by The Dufala Brothers, a pair of environmentally conscious contemporary artists. One of them has created amazing watercolors of hundreds of plastic bottles hovering in space, forming clouds or mist. Weeks ago, I thought I’d try to imitate the bottle painting technique. Once I had made one bottle that I felt was reasonably good (The Dufala Brothers’ are much clearer), then one just didn’t seem like enough. So I decided I should make seven of them. This meant I had to try and recall different shapes and colors of plastic bottles, and suddenly I understood firsthand that was probably the point to begin with.

Day two hundred and ninety-five: Poking about photos I’ve taken in art museums, I ran across several from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. At the time, in 2009, I remember being surprised by his color choices in several of the paintings, and the bold use of brushstroke Munch used to blend the colors on the canvas. Tonight’s sketch was inspired by a detail from one of those paintings, although it doesn’t come close to working as well as the original, which somehow seems studied and refined despite the unorthodox style. What I realized while working is that Munch must have had a complex plan and set of ideas that steered his choices. Anyway, this is my version, and for better or worse, it was sure fun to play with paint!

Day two hundred and ninety-one: This afternoon I looked at the Rembrandt print from which I made yesterday’s sketch under a microscope. With the help of a few terrific paper conservators, we confirmed what I suspected: the print shows the effects of drypoint burr. Drypoint uses a sharp point to scratch the lines directly into the copper plate, and little shavings of copper remain along the edges of the line. During the printing of early impressions, this burr causes a rich, velvety diffusion of ink, which I have attempted to imitate here using a watercolor brush. However, the pressure of the press quickly wears away the burr, and later impressions lack the quality. Throughout history, others have tried to doctor up later impressions by imitating burr with a brush, but under a microscope true drypoint burr is distinguished by a very tiny white line at the center. One area that showed this most distinctly during our study was around the little dog at the feet of the man in a brim hat. Although there was no burr in the pasture beyond, I also enjoyed imitating Rembrant’s simple yet effective means of drawing cattle and a cowherd. Do you see them?