Drawing Michelangelos David

Michelangelo said the artist reveals forms already there in the stone. Like the perfect form in Platonism. But what’s astonishing is that this came from his own mind — he continued reaching into something infinite and inexhaustible hidden in the depths of his life. There’s no full stop and no perfect form in this process, it’s an unceasing striving towards perfection. This is more…

Contrapposto thoughts

Discobolus has to be one of my favourite sculptures. What’s amazing is that the one I know is a Roman copy in stone of an original Greek bronze. To create it in bronze is one thing but to carve it in stone is a huge achievement. At art college I dismissed the great achievements of Hellenistic artists, simply going along with what was generally…

Pencil portrait

I still use the crosshatching technique I learned at school . It has an energy that reminds me of stone carving and I approach it in a similar way. Although the stone or marble carving process is different in the sense it is reductive it still has an aspect which is akin to modelling and refining with chisels.

New Pencil drawing

Charcoal portrait

I’m using other people’s references right now and this is from Howard Lyon. I’m very grateful that he has provided such a good resource for artists, at reasonable prices. Selecting images among the ones I bought is painstaking and it’s difficult to say exactly why I choose specific images. From 1000 images there are a handful I can use. He has created albums with…

Schrödinger’s negative entropy

Schrödinger spoke about life being a kind of negative entropy and this is close to the Buddhist idea of life force that brings parts together to form a whole which is life. Buddhism says it is possible to fuse our microcosmic life with the macrocosm. And the opposite of this positive force would be entropy. Of course everything is subject to the law of…

Torso

This was the first pencil drawing I have done in a while and have never worked it to such a finish. Although a closer look reveals the shading and cross hatching is still visible. The process of shading , as I’ve done here, is reminiscent of stone carving with a claw chisel. The forms are revealed by repeatedly building up layers, as if focusing…