jbsketchjournal

[jbsketchjournal]

November 23, 2024: I attended a ceremony and concert hosted at Brno's Masaryk University. All the talking was in Czech so I had energy to focus on drawing... a couple of the speakers and some of the singers, who were waiting to perform.

[jbsketchjournal]

November 19, 2024: Another round of drawings made from a moving bus, this on our way out to the country for a coach tour to the northern Moravian village of Hukvaldy. It was fun to try to capture some wide things and some tall things.

[jbsketchjournal]

November 11-19, 2024: Catherine gave me the assignment to "document pastries" and this collection of drawings based on various desserts and breakfast sweets we had is as close as I was able to come. They were all pretty. It's hard to capture scrumptiousness...

[jbsketchjournal]

November 18, 2024: I was strangely moved by the beauty of the letter forms on the memorials at Brno's Jewish Cemetery, which were more varied and seemingly more attuned to the dominant aesthetics of their times than I ever recall seeing in visits to other graveyards. I attempted to capture some of them after documenting with photographs.

[jbsketchjournal]

November 17, 2024: The collection of puppets representing the history of regional itinerant puppet troupes at the Moravian Museum in Brno was pretty staggering, with almost an entire floor of the museum devoted to puppets, primarily from the 19th Century. To draw some of them was a really immersive experience.

[jbsketchjournal]

November 14, 2024: We took a day to travel out of Prague to Terezín, a fortressed garrison town that was the site of a brutal prison and forced ghetto under Hitler. The tour we took was too structured and rushed for me to draw while it was happening, so I drew afterwards, working freely from photos I’d taken, focusing mostly on the geometry of things we’d seen. Histories of atrocity tend to leave me feeling numb. Can drawing provide a way of processing the inconceivable? Can it provide witness and engage memorialization?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 13, 2024: We’re not foodies, but we did take a four-hour Taste of Prague tour. I thought I’d use my phone to take pictures of all the appetizing things, but I left it at the hotel. So I drew instead in a tiny notebook I was carrying. This is drawing as pure memorandum, with no aesthetic pretensions. Could that be liberating?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 12, 2024: Also at DOX in Prague, a short experimental video by Vladimir Turner, titled “Neoaboriginal.” I watched it once and then drew very roughly as I watched it a second time. Later I refined the drawings based on the memory aid that the roughs provided. I’ve always enjoyed attempting to draw a “moving target.” Does something have to sit still for you to draw it?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 12, 2024: DOX, a contemporary arts center in Prague, was featuring a very energizing exhibit of photo portraits of artists by Jaroslav Brabec. I loved how so many of the portraits broke the rules that you might learn in an Into to Photography class, and all the variety of scale and viewpoint they captured as a collection. I was really moved to draw, and the result was this composite. Sometimes I have to apply myself to drawing task, at other times it seems to flow naturally from the state of mind I’m in and the situation. Can I cultivate those factors?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 12, 2024: Steeples, chimneys, and turrets of Prague, as viewed from our top floor room at the Hotel Haštal. I appreciated the opportunity this view afforded of capturing fragments, rather than attempting to create a full view of a building or scene. Are viable fragments something worth looking for when you’re on a sketch quest?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 10, 2024: The costumes for the animal characters in the balletic, Ostrava-based production of Janáček’s THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN were a mixture of abstraction, avant-garde fashion, and organic form, without any attempt to depict animals literally or naturalistically as some productions of this opera do. I tried to capture those qualities in these thumbnails made started during intermission and finished after the performance. What’s the difference between depicting something accurately and attempting to capture its distinctive qualities?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 9, 2024: In this case I did draw while I was observing a performance, attempting to capture Czech baritone Adam Plachetka in action during his recital. Not much of a likeness of a man with a large head and distinctive features. Getting a likeness is hit or miss for me. What’s the secret?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 8, 2024: a performance by the opera company of Ostrava of Pavel Haas’s rarely performed THE CHARLATAN. Often at home I sketch during performances. In this case I sketched after the fact, attempting to make a memorandum of a few of the show’s striking stage pictures. You can draw from direct observation, from short term memory, or from a reference like a photo. What are the differences? Do I view the performance differently knowing that I want to capture some pictures from it after it’s over?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 8, 2024: Sketches made during a visit to Brno’s Moravian Gallery, which features primarily work by Czech artists from the early 20th Century through the present. Here the attempt is not to reproduce the work with any kind of accuracy, but to capture features that I consider memorable from a highly subjective standpoint. Can drawing be a way to perceive the artwork of others? Does drawing like this capture the the thing perceived, or more the act of perceiving it? Or both?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 7, 2024: Waiting for the start of a concert of spiritual music at Brno’s Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady, I attempted to capture the ornate altarpiece and a few of the many baroque sculptures that populate its lofty spaces. In an interesting environment drawing can be a time-filler while you’re waiting for something to start. Does it help focus the mind to help you listen once the music starts?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 5, 2024 - Gatherings from two aspects of the Museum of the City of Brno at Spílberk Castle. Top row, artifacts from the history of the castle’s fortress and prison; lower row, modernist sculpture from the museum’s art collection. In both cases I thought of the task as “collecting interesting shapes.” To what purpose could one put such a collection and what’s the value of capturing it in drawing?

[jbsketchjournal]

November 6, 2024 - As seen on a guided tour of Villa Tugendhat, renowned functionalist residence designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he of the “less is more” philosophy. It is one of the cultural treasures of Brno. I drew very quickly in pencil, then went over it in ink and wash later. Here drawing and notes are a way of capturing the visual and conceptual highlights of an experience. I opted not to buy the photo pass that granted permission to use a camera and to rely on drawing alone. What’s the difference between drawing and photography as modes of documentation?