Friday, November 4, 2011

Horn Player

Jeffrey Lang, one of the great horn players of our time, did a dazzling rendition of the Mozart Horn Concerto last week at the Bard Performing Art Center in New York.


I knew I only had about 15 minutes to sketch his performance (it's a short piece), so I dove in with water-soluble colored pencils and brush pens, which I held discreetly in my left hand. I had all the stuff ready to go when the piece started so that I didn't have to dig around and break anyone's concentration.

Previous concert sketches on GJ:
Mirko Listening
Club Passim Gig
Concert Sketching
Shapewelding Sketching 
The Cello and the Pencil

4 comments:

Tom Hart said...

Another stellar sketch. Heck, it's almost a disservice to call it a sketch (not that there's anything wrong with sketches). It's as much a work of bona fide fine art as an easel painting, except for the size...but I feel that way about any good "sketch", particularly the ones you share with us.

Was there much pencil drawing under the color to establish the forms? I see some angular marks near the shoulders, but not much else.

James Gurney said...

Thanks so much, Tom. I don't know where a sketch stops and a drawing begins. Or for that matter when a drawing end and a watercolor painting begins.

For this one, I did the initial lay-in drawing in a russet water-soluble colored pencil, which you can see around the edges. The figure is about 5 or 6 inches tall. The skin tones on the face are done with a brush that was already filled with that light red-brown color, kind of a shorthand for a skin tone.

Dan Gurney said...

Masterful!

Olaf Johansson said...

Great sketch!