Couldn’t get the nose/mouth area right. Or the eyes. Sigh.
Sketch 048: Cat Statuette, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1956
Couldn’t get the nose/mouth area right. Or the eyes. Sigh.
Sketch 048: Cat Statuette, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1956
I decided to try a fast sketch. “Fast” being a relative term, to me. I was agonizing over each chicken-scratch millimeter line and found it frustrating. Maybe “loose sketch” is a better description. I chose this bottle to use because of its nice lines.
Sketch 047: Glass Perfume Bottle, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76
For a long time while I was sketching, I thought this looked like the aliens in Independence Day. When I added the flower, it started to look a bit like an opaque martini glass.
Sketch 046: Terracotta Kylix (drinking cup) with flower, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Greek Government, 1927
This sketch was surprisingly hard; another one where I just finally stopped erasing, deciding to leave it alone. I fall into the category of “chicken scratch” sketchers. I put down short, quick strokes, lots and lots of them. If I don’t like the first few dozen, I press a little harder and make them darker, as if that’s the problem. Well, that’s one of the problems, but not the problem. While I’m sketching with my right hand, I’m kneading the eraser in my left hand, getting it ready.
What fascinates me about this straw is the time frame: 1230-1250. There are a gazillion things in the world that I never took any time to consider, and straws being invented around 3,000 BCE is one of them. If anyone had asked me as to when straws originated, I would have guessed in the 20th century, after plastic was invented. Straws have always been plastic, right? I was wrong, wrong, wrong, about 5,000 years wrong.
Sketch 045: Straw, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1947