Friday, 8 August 2008

Sketches - Rodin

D4186g11_12-rodin_rainbowAuguste  Rodin was not just one of the world's most expressive sculptors, he also had a fine line in a dynamic form of sketching. 

Fascinated with the human form and its infinite expressive variations, Rodin would let nude models loose in the studio while he dashed off literally thousands of pencil and watercolour sketches, often without even lifting the pencil from the page. D7174g

 D4309g They weren't studies for new sculptures as such, more a method for automatising his feeling for human form. and an attempt to express living motion in a static art.

“Be angry, dreamy, praying, crying or dancing,"was the only instruction the models ever got. "It is up to me to capture and maintain the line that appears truthful.”

These are just some of the many thousands of sketches he dashed off, and then pored over, studied and often cut up and reassembled. (Click the pics to enlarge.)

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