I attended a weekend drawing workshop at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and enjoyed the day spent in the historic Cast Hall most of all. It's a remarkable warren of lofty rooms in the back of the adjacent Museum. In it are dozens and dozens of dusty life-sized reproductions of sculpture from all eras in Western art. I especially loved the look of a massive David looming over the top of a what? Yes, a blackboard! Delightful! I felt the ghosts of students past, all intense and devoted and serious, bent double over their drawing boards. Scratching away with their slender sticks of "vine charcoal".
The class itself was very much about how to do faithful and meticulous reproductions of whatever was in front of you. Valuable skill! Priceless ability! To be diligently sought after! Nonetheless, I liked the quick sketches that I did much better. Is this laziness on my part?
I just liked him best. Just for scale, this is an 18" x 24" sketchbook. Much beyond my regular sketchbook size. But fun!
1 comment:
I'm a quick & dirty kind of sketcher. I find that if I get really gritty with the details, the image tightens up and loses all spontaneity and interest. I am especially partial to semi-blind contour drawing with splashes of watercolour (the only kind of watercolour I ever bother with, other than monotyping!) to really get the looseness going and to break the preciousness of the white page.
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