Greyhound

click image to enlarge

There is a collection of drawings in four volumes the title of which is “Great Drawings of All Times,” selected and edited by Ira Moskowitz. The volumes are large and all the reproductions are in full color. These books were published in 1962 and I have never seen anything anywhere better than this collection.
For many years I have looked at the drawings in those books and they presented certain almost insolvable problems. The thing that puzzled me the most was this: I would look at a drawing, and I would see that it was full of the most glaring errors that drawings are prone to, incorrect proportions, confused unfinished shapes, accidentally silly facial expressions, and yet when taken as a whole the drawings, despite there problems, appeared somehow perfect.

Once, in an attempt to figure this out, I copied a number of the drawings. In most cases the drawings were on medium to dark colors of paper, and the drawings were done in colors just somewhat darker than the paper itself. Suddenly everything became clear to me, it was the color of the paper, and the colors of the drawing materials that were beautiful, and not the chosen subject matter, and furthermore when drawings have such subtle tints placed on a tinted ground the figure and the ground merge together just like smoke, and “mistakes” have no visual meaning.

So I came to this conclusion, a maroon wash of ink on a dusty pink piece of paper was beautiful in its own right, and the subject added yet something more to a wonderful combination. This drawing of mine is a good example of this effect.

This drawing measures 7” x 6.5”. It is drawn on painted and tinted watercolor paper with a red wax pencil. There are some highlights in the drawing which were put in by scratching through the ground with a razor blade. It is signed and dated across the bottom, Richard Britell, October 6, 2001.