Drawing glassware

Conte sketch of glasses

©2009 Caroline Roberts

Today's daily sketch of a selection of glasses. Like Morandi I plan to draw these over several days, trying to capture the complicated pattern of reflections and shadows and lose the outlines of the glasses. The outlines and the shadows ended up too heavy (in my opinion) in this sketch. But that's what practice is for!

Georgio Morandi: Still Life (1916)

This is one of my favorite Morandi paintings. I love the muted colors and the flat shapes of the bottles and pitchers. His paintings generally have a serenity to them that I enjoy, but this one seems to have a movement with the serenity, like a graceful dance. I think it comes from the portrait format, the long bottle shapes and the acute angles of the shadows.

Ben Nicholson: 1945 (still life)

I haven't read enough on either artist to know for sure, but I do think that Morandi's work influenced Ben Nicholson's still life paintings. I like the way that Nicholson added his own twist to cubism. He separates outline from form and somehow achieves unmistakable depth using flat shapes. I think it's those cunning slivers of shadows.

With these two masters as my guides I shall be tackling those glasses again...