I mostly sketch from photographs, simply as a practical matter (I mostly work from home, and am mostly in a college town in mid-Michigan; nit a lot of horses and barbarian ladies sitting around my kitchen waiting to be models). But this gets me thinking a lot about how high-speed photography has changed drawing and painting, not by replacing them—the perennial anxiety about art and technology—but by giving the artist one more tool to see more clearly in ever smaller increments. At my most hopeful, I wonder about the ways genAI will offer creatives sharper scalpels and finer microscopes. (And at my least hopeful? There, I’m pretty hopeless.)
Anyway, last week was all “furious dancers,” a subject that is devilishly tricky to capture from life if you haven’t first had the benefit of capturing it from a snapshot.
This lady in the flowing skirt was my son’s favorite from last week. He insists it’s legible, but I worry; her posture is so striking and strange. Either way, it is indeed a good sketch, in that it captured what I hoped to capture. I just wonder if I maybe chose the wrong subject to begin with.
I think this one was my favorite. Draped cloth is a fun challenge in restraint, and I think both the dynamism of her gesture and its dignity and grace all came through. 10 of 10, A++; would draw again.
