London Exhibitions

We're fortunate in London at the moment to have several superb exhibitions running. I've seen the Art of PIXAR show which is great fun then over the Bank holiday last weekend I visited two excellent shows on classical artists. Firstly, 'Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master'. This does exactly as the subtitle suggest in two ways - it allows you to get within a couple inches of these breathtaking, 500 hundred year old drawings & it also gives you a sense of who the man was & how he lived. There are 90 drawings on display & several letters from & to him. There's correspondence between him & a nephew where he's thanking him for a gift of cheese & giving him advice on finding the right girl to marry!


It's a pleasant surprise to find great big enlargments of Michelangelo drawings on the Tube.





Interesting article here by Waldemar Janusczcak in the Sunday times Magazine, 5th March 2006.






This is a copy I made from a Michelangelo drawing on the advice of a fine artist I once worked with on a job in Cardiff.
It's a good exercise & helps you learn a lot about what kind of marks best portray form, bone, hair, light on skin etc. But I got the ear in the wrong place though!



Found this illustration by John Glasham in a collection of his work. I was not familiar with this artist & thank man about town Brendan Amphlett for introducing it to me!



'TUTTO SPIRITO E FOCO'

The second show I saw, & even more grandly titled than the Michelangelo, is 'Tiepolo: All Spirit & Fire' at the Courtauld Institute. It's a fine collection of oil sketches made as quick studies to work out compositions & get client approval before embarking on the finished fresco. The man could make a ceiling look like this -


These are some quick thumbnails I made while I was there.