Book46

SketchBooks

Σκύρος
06 March 2013 - 26 July 2013
14 x 25 cm
handmade, canson mi-tientes paper, ink, watercolor, colored pencil

Cover of sketchbook 46: plain grey-green linen with a black elastic band, unadorned Sketchbook 46 frontispiece on orange paper: A. E. Stallings's poem 'The Island of Skyros' copied out under a painted title, with a ballpoint still life in the corner — Ghent, NYC, Indianapolis, Belgrade, March–August 2013
Sketchbook 46 opening: 'This book begins on a plane. The Crystal Ship is being filled' — a painted airplane window on orange paper with budget notes ('learn to drive, NOT OPTIONAL'), facing a watercolor of Michaël asleep in a blue shirtSketchbook 46 spread: sanguine life studies — bent legs and a standing torso on the white page; on the orange page a sprawled male nude heightened with white chalk, legs splayedSketchbook 46 spread of Metropolitan Museum notes: Egyptian scarab rings and a blue-scarab necklace in colored pencil, notes on the Hudson River School, Church's Heart of the Andes and Tiepolo, with Eros, Pothos and Himeros listedSketchbook 46 spread: a museum cast of a male torso from behind, modeled in charcoal and white on orange paper, beside a lighter sketch of a spiraling sculptural groupSketchbook 46 spread: charcoal study of a man hauling himself up a ladder into shadow, and opposite, a white-faced ram's head peering past an ornately carved cabinetSketchbook 46 spread, Easter 2013: a smoky charcoal portrait of a long-haired girl doubled across both pages, with planetary notes — Mars blood and bone, Saturn teeth, Mercury brain — for a game about the bodySketchbook 46 spread, mid-May: a painted self-portrait head balancing a cherry, a red heart, and pages of seed, fruit and flower studies — strawberry, plum, wheels and pods — over notes on thinking decorativelySketchbook 46 spread: notes on Viktor Shklovsky's 'Making Strange' and estrangement in art, a small self-portrait with twisted locs, and a nude holding dark lilies drawn in pencil and sanguineSketchbook 46 spread: life-drawing session painted over a violet watercolor ground — standing, bending and cross-legged nudes reserved in white, one small figure in full dark washSketchbook 46 spread: loose watercolor peonies in rose and magenta with sap-green leaves, blooming across the gutter of the tan pagesSketchbook 46 spread: flowers in black ballpoint on the tan page — an open peony, a bud, a dark rose — continuing onto blue-white paper as chrysanthemums tinted violet, orange and a pink rose in colored pencilSketchbook 46 spread: 'Frequently I am quite torn apart by anger' — a ballpoint figure collapsing amid scribbled darkness beside an up-flung arm drawn in graphite, a bare foot planted below Sketchbook 46 spread titled 'The Audience': overlapping colored-pencil studies of a group of nudes in graphite, brown and wine red — standing, crouching and turning as if watching something Sketchbook 46: graphite study on orange paper of a marble female torso from behind, headless and armless on its museum mount Sketchbook 46, 8 March at the Met: graphite and watercolor study of the Crouching Aphrodite marble, wine-red shadows at her hip, a rainbow of paint swatches down the page edge Sketchbook 46 spread: pencil study of wind-shaped trees in the Sint-Pietersabdij garden in Ghent, with a black frigatebird with scarlet throat painted on the facing page Sketchbook 46: watercolor self-portrait in a grey tank top cradling a skull, with a note wondering whether to stop this book early before the vacation Sketchbook 46: soft pencil drawing of a crowned Madonna statue with hands pressed in prayer, ringed by a halo of roses Sketchbook 46 spread: orchid buds barely open, purple and green against a brown wash — 'things that are not, that cannot, but must be' — beside a chalk study of a weathered column and rooftopSketchbook 46 spread: two graphite dancers pressed back to front, one gripping the other's hip, beside a black gouache figure with a raised brush-stroke arm Sketchbook 46 spread on orange paper: pencil study of a pedimented baroque facade beyond a staircase, its sky filled in blue with white chalk clouds, beside a watercolor houseplant in a black vase
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