#sketch

Apparently this is a small preparatory sketch for a bigger, finished painting - the kind of quick study made to work out a mood before committing to the real canvas. I couldn't track down much more about it.

This one's apparently a quick gift sketch for a friend, painted during a stay on Capri - the model was well known locally and sat for plenty of other visiting painters too.

I read that Matisse painted this from inside a moving car — had his son pull over on a drive to an airport near Paris in 1917, then worked through the windshield with the windows shut while passing traffic rocked the car back and forth.

I couldn't find much on this one at all. From what I've read he's mostly remembered for cubism, and this seems to come from before any of that — a small early thing that survived. If anyone knows more, I'd love the story.

This is one of several studies Michelangelo made while working out the Libyan Sibyl for the Sistine Chapel ceiling — the same sheet has more sketches on the back, including a small seated figure that never made it into the fresco. Apparently he drew from a male studio model even though the finished sibyl reads as a woman, which is why the anatomy here looks so unmistakably male.

This is apparently a working sketch — Velázquez roughing out how a soldier's back and stance might sit before he committed anything to canvas for a much bigger scene.