Drawing 102: Class 3 - Sketching

The Sketching Class I am leading in the classroom sub-forum of the Wet Canvas Drawing and Sketching Forum is finally posted....which means I may be a bit preoccupied for the next couple of weeks. If you're interested in joining us, you can see what we're up to in the Sketching Class Notes and Assignments.

You may see some old friends in the selection of blogs listed in the reference section at the end of the class notes. My aim was to demonstrate the range of people who sketch on a regular basis! And the class was already long - but I so wanted to add in lots more!

As always happens when you do a long and complicated posting I also found the odd problem with the links in the Reference Section which I was sure I had double-checked before posting. Here is the corrected version of the links to the sketchbooks of various famous artists in art history. Thanks to Judy, the Moderator of the WC Art History Forum for contributing some of them.

• Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch 1606-1669) Link: Good example of Rembrandt’s sketches and drawings can be found in
- the British Museum and
- Getty Museum – sketch of an artist in his studio

• JMW Turner (English 1775-1851) produced 300 sketchbooks and around 30,000 sketches and watercolours on his travels.
- Five years after his death, the majority of his art was bequeathed to the nation and is housed at Tate Britain Turner sketchbooks (17802 to 1840s), Turner Bequest, Tate Britain

• John Constable (English 1776 - 1837) believed in the importance of working from life and based his paintings on drawings of the landscape.
- The current exhibition of his landscapes at Tate Britain focuses on the relationship between his sketching and the production of six foot canvases.
- Sketchbook (1814) at the Victoria and Albert Museum
- Oil sketches at the Victoria and Albert Museum

• Conrad Martens (English 1801 - 1878) – who accompanied Darwin on the Beagle as expedition artist and produced three detailed sketchbooks of places visited and objects seen on the expedition.
- this is the story of his sketchbooks from the Beagle expedition which are in the Cambridge University Library
- this is the itinerary of the expedition
- these are some of the sketchbook images. Most are in graphite. Click on an image to see a larger image and more detail about it.

• Cezanne (French 1839 - 1906) is often called ‘Father of Modern Art’. He worked from life and made detailed observations of form in his drawings and sketches as well as his paintings.
- Pencil and watercolour drawings (search for ‘pencil and watercolour’ under ‘Technique’)
- Pencil sketches (search for ‘graphite’ under ‘Technique’)

• Vincent Van Gogh (Dutch 1853 - 1890) made preliminary drawings (sketches) prior to developing his paintings. He often drew with a reed pen and ink. He probably has one of the most interesting range of marks – which some say were notations for the colours he saw.
- Examples from the 2005 exhibition of Van Gogh Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum, New York

• John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925) – examples of sketches from
- an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and
- the collection at Harvard (submit a search for ‘sketchbook’ – 20 pages of images)

• Various American Artists: Smithsonian Museum – Sketchbooks in the Archives of American Artb (link is currently misbehaving - I'll add it back in when I'm certain it works)

• Henry Moore (English 1898 - 1986)
- early drawings (1916-1939) of ideas / for sculptures

• David Hockney (English 1937 – present day)
- sketches

There's some fabulous sources in there - the one that had me jumping up and down was the link I found to all Turner's sketchbooks!

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