POSTS
Portrait of Stephane Mallarme (Work In Progress)
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I’d like to develop my drawing style. As much as I admire the photorealistic work that some people can achieve, and as much as I’d like to get to the point that I can achieve that myself, I think I’d rather focus on developing a painterly style. What better way to develop that style than to copy a few paintings?
This is a work by Manet that I’m copying from an image on my laptop.
So far, I’ve put a grid on the paper (just in case you haven’t noticed), and laid out the basic composition. It took a little over an hour to get to this point.
It’s interesting, because I thought the grid would actually speed up the process. Instead, it only served to point out how far off my drawing is. This is one of the few drawings that I’ve actually pulled out an eraser — I usually just massage the drawing to fit with whatever I happened to lay down. The grid, I guess, serves as the drawing police: “You are out of line! Get back!”
This is also my first multi-day drawing. I usually do whatever I can in one sitting, mainly because I don’t want to let all my stuff stay out, taking up space on the dining room table or kitchen counter. Working from a picture helps with that.
Stay tuned…