Research points Kate Atkin and Peter Paul Rubens

Two artists whose work exemplifies mastery of detailed drawing:

Kate Atkin is a contemporary artist who concentrates on form and medium in her drawings and  investigates the separation of certain features from their surroundings. She begins her drawings by taking photographs of objects from different and unusual angles, then combining and transforming  them (ie. a plant or a tree) and re-arranges the subject matter in order to abstract and  expose its curious  side.

She says of her work that the main concern is to remove any lingering associations by concentrating only on form and texture. The process results in large drawings which are mostly black and white and incredibly detailed. As her drawings are so large and detailed,   by repeatedly checking the drawings from as far away as possible as they progress, she is able to make out a sort of geography in them. But the difficulty is knowing when to stop – I could understand why! And it helps to stop a day early – how does she know this?

Kate Atkin

Kate Atkin











Rubens

The Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens,  (1577–1640),  was the most prominent northern European artist of his day and is also now widely considered to be on of the foremost painters in Western art history.
By combining the realistic tradition of Flemish painting with the imaginative freedom and classical themes of Italian Renaissance painting, he was responsible for the revival of northern European painting.
Rubens was a great admirer of the Italian Rennaissance artists, drawing in the same tradition during his stay in Italy between 1600 – 1608.
He was dedicated to careful anatomical study and  went a step further by filling his works with energy and dynamism as illustrated in this drawing.  Rubens used cross-hatching in pen to define the muscles and sinews of the flayed body parts that he studied from casts, a technique Leonardo also used for his own anatomy drawings.

He has superbly demonstrated in this drawing, an energetic composition consisting of contorted arms in unusual positions, by invented details, and by placing the models in a very complex spatial association

He succeeded in  combining the traditional realism of Flemish painting with the freer and imaginative classical Italian Renaissance painting, thereby  injecting  northern European painting with a new lease of life. In Venice he was also greatly influenced by Titian and spent much time in Rome where he produced altarpieces for the churches of Santa Croce di Gerusalemme (1602); now in Hopital du Petit-Paris, Grasse, France) and the Chiesa Nuova (1607); his first widely acknowledged masterpieces.