The magic of drawing

Ramón Casas, Paris 1900

The magic of drawing

Andrea del Sarto

The magic of drawing

by Elisabeth Vigée LeBrun  (1755 - 1842)

A young lady draws the portrait of a young girl

@ Albertina online, Vienna

The magic of drawing

Rembrandt, Saskia sleeping

Those sweet critics

"New School-Independant painting.

Independant from their will. Let's hope it is so  for their sake"

A very visionary illustrator critizes Impressionistic painters at the time of their first exhibitions.

Where on earth did I get this from???

The magic of drawing

 
Hans Holbein the Younger, 1538

and once again, the magic of drawing

Drapery for seated figure
Leonardo Da Vinci, 1470
Louvre Museum

Ukiyo-e

Last August I spent a couple of days in Barcelona and I went to visit this exhibition:

I'd like to thank Quicoto for letting me use his photograph here. My own photograph of the façace of La Pedrera (Gaudí's building where the exhibition was held) was not that good and only half of the poster appeared. Here's a link to his flickr photostream and his blog. Thank you Quicoto.

Ukiyo-e literally means "images of a floating world". I had never heard the word in my life, but those Japanese prints of the XVII and XIX century took my breath away. I had heard the name of Hokusai before, but Harunobu, Kiyonaga, Utamaro or Hiroshige sounded all new to me.

A video also showed the inmense talent and mastery of the craft required by wood carvers to achieve those delicate lines on the paper after printing.

This exhibition has been organized jointly by the Caixa Catalunya Foundation and the French National Library and it will be shown in public again in Paris from 17 November till 15 February 2009.

(This might be the first comic strip ever, apparently the cat is saying something like "I'm fed up of these people who are here disturbing my peace" or something of that sort)

Images from El Mundo newspaper

I also went to have a look at the bookshop in the ground floor and I came across a gorgeous book: "Japonisme". It's a book about the influence of Japanese art on Western art , which it turns out to be huge! (and I couldn't help it, some of the prints of the later periods kept reminding me of the Tintin strips by Hergé!)

Maybe the fact that Florizelle, the author of the ineffable Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien had once pointed me in the direction of Pattern Recognition, the wonderful livejournal where funny lady posts so many gorgeous images of Japanese prints, made me go for this exhibition instead of that of Duchamp or Nancy Spero's, which were also shown in Barcelona at the time, and also made me drool. (This could be my answer to the question that Maryam once raised in her blog "How has blogging really changed your life?")

It is curious that some time later, when I was visiting funny lady's website again I noticed the link to one of her favourite blogs: Japonisme.

Miguel Navia

La cerilla sueca

Castillos encantados

El mundo flotante

El caso de la señorita Amelia

El gran libro del misterio, cover

El sueño de Pau-Yu

La edad pato

El juego de las supersticiones

This work belongs to the portfolio of a very young and talented Spanish illustrator, Miguel Navia. I discovered his work via this address and was amazed by the mysterious atmosphere and sense of space of his drawings. He has done so many professional work in spite of his youth! The illustrations above have appeared in book covers, posters and children's books illustrations, to me this is 100% artistic.

You can see his online portfolio here. I love it.

Images: courtesy of Miguel Navia, thank you so much Miguel!

I think this is the most breathtaking drawing I've ever seen (printed). First thing I'll do if I evermanage to go to New York is go and meet the lady in person at the Metropolitan Museum.
It's the study for the Libyan Sibyl that Michaelangelo painted in the Sixtina Chapel in the Vatican.


It's funny how the final rendering of the painting does not produce the same effect on me as this drawing. Her expression shows to me in a way that I cannot explain the whole point of art in this planet. You can see the finished painting here.