Collection of Flemish and Dutch artwork, with some descriptions and discussion of style and methods. The drawings range from very rough, simple line sketches to highly detailed meticulous wash studies and finely hatched pen-and-ink works. Some you can imagine the artist having spent hours working on, others just a few moments. There are lots of amazing studies of folds from the clothing people wore, and a wide variety of faces. The introductory text describing the artwork and its changing styles through the centuries and via different artists wasn't nearly as incomprehensible as I feared, actually pretty interesting. But of course, I mostly enjoyed just looking and looking at the pictures.

There are lots of the types of drawings you'd expect to find: the portraits and madonnas, landscapes and buildings. They all show me something to aspire to, but I was really glad that I found something to smile about, too. One is a drawing called Men Shoveling Chairs. Seriously. I was glancing at the plate titles in the front of the book and my eye wandered down the usual kind of names: Portrait of a Young Man, Virgin and Child, Landscape with a Bridge, etc. then I saw Men Shoveling Chairs. What!? I turned to that page and it was exactly that: four men with long-handled paddle-like shovels thrusting them under piles of three-and-four-legged stools and chairs. I still puzzle over what it means or why the artist drew it, but it makes me laugh nonetheless. The other amusing one is a drawing by Hieronymous Bosch called Tree-Man in a Landscape which reminds me how even centuries ago people would idly sketch fantastic things they just dreamed up: a "man" with an egg-shaped body (cut away to show figures around a table inside), his legs are trees and his feet boats, his hat has a jug on top out of which tiny figures climb on a ladder, an owl sits on a branch growing from his back. It's entirely fanciful and curiously delightful to peer at.

I also really like the wonderful drawing of an elephant by Rembrandt, and several awesome lions. There's also a boar's head, a scruffy-looking bull, a donkey, a beautiful little monkey with a chain on his neck, several cows in a group and quite a few horses (mostly with figures). There's also a wonderful page full of little studies of garden vegetables which made me wish I could draw plants better.

from the Dogear Diary ( )