Monday, February 6, 2012

Brilliant Laundry

The vivid Italian sun against a house and its laundry in the village of Ponte a Mensola, a frazione on the eastern outskirts of Florence. I lived nearby, and often walked out to make sketches.

While I was making this one, a local man approached and started telling me about the stone quarries up the road in Settignano, and how Michelangelo swallowed the dust from the stone along with his mother's milk. I knew the story, but it sounds better served up with the spice of regional (or is it subregional?) patriotism.



The picture was made with pencil, gouache and watercolour in something less than an hour.

4 comments:

  1. Great sketch. Reminds me of Paul Hogarth's work. Do you know his stuff ?

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    1. Not by name, but when I googled him I recognized some of his images. And they're wonderful. That cover to Lord of the Flies is iconic. Thanks for putting a name to all those pictures I'd forgotten I'd ever seen.

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  2. I try to tell my students … nothing is boring. Nothing is boring. If you’re bored, you’re boring. CP

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  3. A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

    Michelangelo

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