Monday, July 3, 2023

Sketch for Procession by Haag

In this preparatory sketch of a wedding procession by Carl Haag, the top horizontal line is the eye level.


Sketch for 'A Bridal Procession at Damascus,' 1892 by Carl Haas

Every figure is placed relation to the height of the viewer. Assuming a level ground plane, the eye level intersects the camel riders in the middle of their chests, and it's about half a figure higher than the top of a standing figure.

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful drawing! It's interesting that even though this was a prepatory sketch, there's attention to line weights, with the bolder, darker lines (and wash) assigned to the foreground figures. (For some reason, the rear-most figures next to the building corner depart from this and seem heavy-handed--perhaps an afterthought?) It looks to me as if the foreground work might have been done in pen initially, with some of the line weights then heightened by careful brushwork, but hard to say without, at a minimum, examining the original.

    Thanks very much for highlighting this sketch--I doubt I would have ever seen it otherwise, and it's a gem!

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  2. Shouldn't the line also pass through the foreground camel rider at the same level?

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  3. @squeen it's what I noticed, too. The camels in the back seem to be significantly smaller than the one in the foreground. That might be intentional, but it's noticeable.

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