Some careful drawings from the sister natural history and art museums in Wien. The bird is a paradisevogel, which if you remember your Dr. Suess is the kind of bird with a ridiculously elaborately long tail feather. The bird, or course is from the Naturhistorische Museum. From the Kunsthistorische Museum is a torso of a winged Eros, Aphrodite's son. It's a Roman copy of a Greek original (most of the statues in the Kunsthistorische collection are Roman copies of Greek originals - I don't know where the Greek originals are or if they are still existant). Those Greeks sure knew physical beauty and had a refined sensitive sense of the body. You should see the bodies of the Aphrodite statues with their transparent clinging dress - all done in the, of course, completely contradictory medium of stone. I didn't choose the Aphrodites to draw because I didn't want to spend too much time on all the folds of the drapery. I picked her son Eros to draw because it was a little more simple to draw.
It's interesting to compare say, Michelangelo's work where everyone is all pumped up with muscles - even the women are drawn with every bicep and shoulder muscle pumped up. I wouldn't mess with Eve in the picture above, that's a seriously impressive arm! Compare that with how the Greeks sculpted the figure of Eros (presumably a late teenager or so) with a soft and sensitive hand. Remarkable.
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