Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Ode to Ingres

I LOVE Ingres. His paintings are so fantastic. Above is a drawing I found in a great book called Portraits of Ingres, I highly recommend it. This is based off one of his drawings, not necessarily a perfect match but I thought is was interesting how carefully he would do the face then a lot of the periphery is done very rough. Some of the hands, like this one, look like their straight out of a Picasso drawing.

6 comments:

turcios curriculum said...

GENIAL!

Blake Loosli said...

As always, great and sharp drawing. I've just ordered the book, thanks for the recommendation.

anima-base said...

Gorgeous drawing..
I like this~

Pavel Jakubec said...

Perfectly sketch

Anonymous said...

What is your opinion on Hockney's hypothesis that Ingres used a camera lucida to assist in drawing these portraits? In the book on Ingres, there is a record of criticism of Ingres' photo-realistic style, with one cartoon showing the artist chasing a camera. Personally I thing Ingres was brilliant. It's one of my favorite books.

David Malan said...

Thanks Bob, I haven't yet disciplined myself enough to do more than look at the pictures in the book. I would say that Hockney's allegations don't really bother me too much. For me just looking at the drawings and paintings demonstrated his competence as an artist. You can transfer lines which helps with the proportions but you still loose those lines early in the process and have to depend on your drawings skills after that. While the camera may have helped with the placement of elements it doesn't help with linework or brushwork. I think a sketchbook is the best proof of an artists ability, a bad artist can't fake the lines.
I think the realist style he uses is fantastic, The paintings probably would never be mistaken for photographs and more importantly he's been able to capture something beautiful and intriguing.