Rodin Sculptures

Bronze sculptures like these are perfect subjects for marker pen sketches.

Rodin Sculptures - Strolling along the Thames embankment one day in London I came across August Rodin's, incomparable "Burgers of Calais".

Rodin Sculptures - Side view of the head in the sketch

The sketches and drawings in this section of the site must span a period of twelve years or so, and this one is out of my latest sketchbook that I took with me on a holiday to Europe a short while ago.

I don't do a lot of sketching these days, and it shows in this book. On the whole it is fairly disappointing. I think that I just don't do enough practise to make it easy and fluid.

• So, it may not be up to much but at least it is a bit different. What I have done here is go back to starting off with a very light pencil sketch. I use a cheap propelling pencil that has an eraser on the end.
• The technique is to sketch quickly and just get something down, and then compare it with the real thing and erase and re-draw until I am fairly happy with the pencil work.
• Then using the pencil as a guide I go for it with a cheap marker pen (in this case two of them, grey and black) very fast. It has to be fairly fast as by this time I have been stood in front of the thing for a while and legs and hands are starting to ache.
• In the past I have tried to draw bronze sculptures like this with pen and ink, and it just does'nt work for me. I get bogged down, but I am definitely going to use marker pens a lot more, as they can get it down fast with less work!

Rodin Sculptures - In the shadow of the Houses of Parliament.

When I was a young guy I spent nine months in Japan and a lot of that time I lived in the suburb of Ueno. I remember only vaguely the details of that time, but one memory stands out firm and clear. My first face to face encounter with a work by Auguste Rodin. It was the famous "Gates of Hell" at the National Museum of Western Art, Ueno. I was totally struck dumb by it! That amazing work started a lifetime's love of art for me,

As an aside, a cast of this particular figure from the burghers group is featured in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. If it wasn't for that and the few paintings by artists other than Van Gough (in particular Odilon Redon) I think I would have left that museum feeling slightly underwhelmed. (The long queue and the crowds really turned me off).

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