Day 0031

Another very late night. Today's drawing is after Guido Reni's Study of Forearms with Hands Crossed.

Went to the Met and looked at bronze, marble, ivory, wooden, terracotta sculpture. Figurines made of real earthy things -- marble, ivory, wood, terracotta, this stuff literally had a vital essence and that gives the sculptures a special quality. There is something very beguiling about making a figure from a material that used to have its own part in the web of life, its own life story. Fossilized, calcified sea creatures, a mighty tree, the living earth. A dimension closed to painting and drawing.

Those figures were made to be touched, it's hard seeing them in a museum where you can't run your hands over them. I'm itching to get my hands dirty again and do some 3D work of my own; it's all about the process, the tactile pleasure.