Day three hundred and fifty-five: For those who have studied Surrealist photography, this image may be familiar. It’s a photograph made around 1930 by Man Ray of the movement’s leader André Breton. I’ve known about it for several years now, and have always found it strange and delightful. When I started sketching it this evening, […]
Also tagged art on art, face, oil, pastelDay three hundred and fifty-three: One thing I’ve learned this year is that I love making lots of vertical lines with a pencil. It’s especially satisfying for me at the end of a long day because it doesn’t really require much thought. My hand seems to naturally make the gesture, and I enjoy watching the […]
Also tagged face, pencilDay three hundred and twenty-five: About the time I put the digital pen to the pad, my good friend, Dana, called from Minneapolis. As we chatted, I started doodling away, and by the time I hung up, half the white space was filled in. The face and surrounding shapes I had drawn looked a little […]
Also tagged face, pencilDay 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 […]
Also tagged animal, conte crayon, oil, pastel, pencilDay three hundred and nine: A very quick day trip back to the NY print fair brought me face to face with what might be my favorite German Expressionist woodcut. I’d never seen it before, but when I was going through a box of prints I immediately liked. By Erich Heckel, and titled “Wolken” (meaning […]
Also tagged art on art, Heckel, landscape, pastelDay three hundred and six: Today at work I was asked to track down the “precise title” of an artwork that has, for two decades, been titled “untitled.” A colleague and I joked how often we see artworks called “untitled” followed by parentheses and a descriptive title. So when, for lack of mental focus, I […]
Also tagged oil, pastelDay 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 […]
Also tagged face, munch, oil, pastelDay one hundred and eighty-nine: Nothing fancy to complicated today. This simply painting was inspired by a fleeting view of a tunnel in an episode from the new Sherlock Holmes series that I was watching after dinner, desperately hoping to be inspired to draw rather than fall asleep. It’s been a long, wonderful, busy week […]
Also tagged architecture, oilDay one hundred and eighty-eight: Anyone who follows these daily sketches may have noticed that when I really don’t know what to draw, I end up doodling something very abstract. Tonight I played vertical lines using black and white pencils to create shapes. It’s something I’ve toyed with before, and sometime when I have a […]
Also tagged black, pencil, whiteDay one hundred and eighty-seven: This morning I read that a man carried a small Picasso drawing out of a San Francisco art gallery and into a waiting taxicab. He didn’t pay for it. Today’s sketch is in honor of the hope that the brazen thief is caught red handed!
Also tagged art on art, cartoon, face, pencil