sketches

Day two hundred and eighty-nine: Before I went to back to school to get an MA in Art History, I used to visit art museums, and whenever possible, take pictures. I was fascinated by the ways in which the art was installed and displayed, and I wanted to someday put together exhibitions of great art myself. Today’s sketch is based on a photograph taken in 2005 at the Rodin museum in Paris, and it’s one of my favorites from those early art museum photo sessions. Because the galleries are in a converted mansion, Rodin’s sculptures are lit by natural daylight through the windows, and thus their forms and the shadows they cast change throughout the day. In this picture, I love the way the window light cascades across the white wall behind the small bronze of the seated muscle-bound man, known as the “American Athlete.”

Day two hundred and eighty-three: Here’s a first: what I decide to sketch took a fraction of the time I thought it would! Usually it’s the other way around. This afternoon, a curator’s request sent me into a gallery of drawings, and although I had seen the drawing before, my recent work with pen and brown ink made me look more closely at one by Luigi Sabatelli (Italian; 1772-1850) titled The Madness of Orlando. I noticed an intensely detailed tree trunk, and realized that emulating Sabatelli’s pen work would be great practice. I chose a very small area to copy, so I could really focus on how the lines functioned. I didn’t want to just see degrees of light and dark, which I tend to translate into scribbles if left to my own devices. The sketch you see here is the result of my experiment. I think the next step will be to zoom out a bit, and try to really create the subject, while employing a system of curved hatches, dashes, and dots similar to Sabatelli’s. He was a talented young man, and made his large, masterful drawing around the age of 23. Check out the 18th-century original at http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/93174.html?mulR=3736|1.

Day two hundred and eighty-one: My friend Kurt’s drawings in pen and ink reminded me of some of my favorite landscapes by Domenico Campagnola. I was inspired poke about the “Pens” settings in the Corel Painter program, and I discovered one called “Real Variable Width Pen.” I found that if I made the “expression” for the pen “pressure,” then I it was particularly versatile, and I was able — for the first time so far this year — to make a tree roughly in Campagnola’s style. Even though he made fairly loopy leaves, my naturally sloppy sketching style makes the whole thing messier. However, I think if I deliberately practiced cleaning up my lines I might be able to emulate the range and depth of forms achieved by the 16th-century Italian master. At least when the subject is a tree. I’m not so sure about people… or anything else for that matter… Anyway, here’s to pens with real variable width!