Sunday, February 28, 2016

Pen-and-Ink

I don't like pen-and-ink drawings all that much.  This one is by Dürer, a Madonna and Child.

Artists seem to like them, or at least, I remember that art students did.  I think I see the attraction of crosshatching or otherwise creating shading and highlighting with line.  There would be a puzzle to work out each time, and as one's skill improved, more would be available to try.

But I don't find the end results attractive.  Intriguing, impressive, yes. But they leave me cold. This will come up shortly when I review Bandersnatch, a new book by Diana Pavlac Glyer.

3 comments:

james said...

The Amazon come-on blurb is seriously off-putting: "inspired by their example, you'll discover how collaboration can help your own creative process and lead to genius breakthroughs in whatever work you do."

Genius?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Yeah, that part about collaboration in general was the final chapter, and not especially gripping. I wonder why Amazon thought that would be a better selling point than Tolkien and Lewis.

jaed said...

I like pencil drawings better myself (both to do and to look at). I think it's because the contrast of ink is too harsh, or something - drawings aren't photorealistic or anything close to it, they have all kinds of stray lines and marks to create various effects, and while pencil lines blend, ink lines just sit there looking unnatural.

Something like that.