Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a painter, architect, inventor, and a scientific student. He was such a natural genius that he embodied the term “Renaissance man.” Today he is best known for his art, including two paintings that are the world’s most famous and admired, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
Using a technique called "hatching", he worked by sketching in series of short, quickly-drawn parallel lines.
He also developed various personal drawing tricks, including curved hatching, to give an especially three-dimensional look. This kind of detail, together with criteria such as his overall style, lineage of ownership of the drawing, and the materials used, has helped determine whether we have a real da Vinci or not.
When he was young he did a lot of sketching with metal pencils (silver) on tinted paper. As he got older, he preferred coloured chalk, although he also used a brush and ink, or a pen and ink for life studies. To add to all of this, Leonardo took artistic exploration of light and shadow very far.
Artists who are most successful in silverpoint drawing are those with a deep concern for beauty of surface. So an artist such as Leonardo, who was the most sensitive draftsperson in all art history, is much more successful in silverpoint than an artist who is heavy-handed in his/her drawings.
'The Foetus in the Womb'
“Section of a Man’s Head Showing the Anatomy of the Eye,” 1489
The bones and muscles of the shoulder are shown in this Da Vinci artwork and I love the amount of detail he goes into.
The muscles of the leg
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I leave you with a citation from Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebooks: “Once you have drawn something so many times you believe you know it by heart, try to draw it without a model; then draw it again with the model, on a thin sheet of glass, and set (the glass) on the drawing you did without seeing the model. Keep in your mind those parts where the drawing (on the glass) doesn’t cover your drawing, and recopy the erroneous bits as many times as necessary so you have the model in your imagination perfectly.”
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