Sketches

Here is another page showing behind the scenes work of how an artistic item comes into being. Most people see only a finished painting or sculpture, and never get to see the preliminary work done by the artist as they decide on composition, pose, size, etc. These sketches show that part of the process. The "Color Comps" page shows how the color scheme is determined. Sketches are usually thrown out when the picture is finished.

This is a charcoal sketch of an idea for an orchid painting.

This page shows a charcoal sketch for a drawing, with tests of soft and hard vine charcoal, and compressed charcoal, with a note about the size determination. The line to the right shows I decided to narrow the composition. Compare the sketch with the drawing.

Here's the finished charcoal drawing

Lessons

Sketches

The entire ballerina is depicted here, and the horizontal and vertical line show a cropping closer to the figure.

We zoom in closer to the ballerina with this one.

This is a sketch for a bronze running figure splashing through water, that I did in three sizes.

Here's another sketch for the bronze. I did the larger sketch, then reduced it. Note the twist of the hips compared to the previous drawing.

And still another one.

Here is the profile, done in a couple sizes.

This pencil drawing was for a chair in the painting of my mother.

I drew this as a horizontal and vertical picture, then decided upon the square composition.

This sketch was done to help determine the composition for a lithograph.

This one shows more of the room, and the figure is less important than in the previous one.

This photo shows the beginning of the litho drawing on a metal plate. This wa drawn with a brush and pencil.

This is the start of a litho on a metal plate of al Muller, violin maker. The red lines are pencil that will not affect the litho. Black lines are done with a litho crayon, and are the beginning of the drawing. The litho is reversed from the drawing, and will reverse again when printed.

This was one idea for the litho.

Here is another idea.

This page shows three different ideas for the drawing.

This is a 20 x 16" charcoal drawing done on brown wrapping paper. The subject is Coventry Patmore, as painted by John Singer Sargent. I liked the profile, and did it as a study. I would not use brown wrapping paper on original work.