The 100 Guilder Drawing

Drawing of Richard on Somerset etching paper 76 x 59 cm. Charcoal & paint (emulsion).

I am pleased with the liveliness, brevity & variety of line.

I added the paint (white house-paint on unbleached—ivory—paper, hardly visible here) for two reasons. To separate the upper body from its background in a subtle way (I did consider a more compromising colour) & to modulate some of the outer lines which had become too heavy in spots. Painting over a line to decrease its thickness has an effect that erasing can't. It is a bit like the difference between a painted line & one printed with wood-block or silkscreen

Five hours with the model & about the same again, without

Table-top Sculpture Painting

I will upload photos here as I advance.

Wood blocks dipped, sanded, & painted

I have drilled & added dowels to the blocks of painted wood, gluing the dowels on just one side so that it can be dismantled & the blocks painted individually (as well as together)

Assembled. I have tried something which I think is successful. I cut two of the blocks at a slight angle to give the whole more of a precarious sense of defying gravity. Looking at it as I made it, another idea occurred to me: separating the blocks by a space small enough to neither ruin the congruence of the painting or to see the dowels--giving it a sense of increased precariousness, as if the blocks danced in the air

Now that I am working with two columns of boxes, instead of one, it means 

painting the figure from six sides, not four. Or, you might count them as five

sides, since two are continuous--the belly view from above--though it is 

painted on two facing columns. But then, I will probably also paint the tops of the 

uppermost boxes, something which made little sense when making single column 

figures. So it might then be counted as eight sides (or seven!)