Michelangelo

Alright, since I brought up Michelangelo (see Greek entry below). The Albertina was showing a number of his drawings, and I copied one. Typical muscular definition - I had no idea there are so many muscles in the neck that needed to be recorded with a pen. But.... great dynamic stuff from Michelangelo, twisting bodies pushing against unseen forces, muscles tense. The drawing I picked was one of the easier drawings to copy. Michelangelo drew in chalk (which is easy to smudge). He built his drawings up with fine hatching work (and good lines!), which however are often smudged out in the final drawing. There were some interesting extremely smudgy drawings of christ on the cross. They seemed a typical for Michelangelo and reminded me almost of Seurat's delicate and extreme tonal drawings. The Michelangelo drawing I copied showed more clearly how the masses are built with his hatch work. My copy, I think, came out nice. It was a little hard to draw though as the light is really low in the museum, and there were hundreds of school kids viewing the exhibit.