'the acrobat's daughter' ~ oil paint on collaged canvas board, 4" x 6"

a few weeks ago i bought  'je suis le cahier: the sketchbooks of picasso'.   the thought of looking through picasso's sketchbooks was, well, tantalizing to say the least.  it is his drawings that i love best; when i saw the picasso exhibit last year in virginia i was mesmerized not by his paintings, but by his line drawings.  

between 1894 and 1967 he kept 175 sketchbooks.  this book doesn't begin to cover most of them, but there is a sampling from different periods in his life. some of my favorite pages are his preliminary sketches for the painting titled 'family of saltimbanques',  which takes me back to the painting at the top of the post!  i painted 'the acrobat's daughter' shortly after i got the book, with picasso's images of circus performers floating through my mind...

charcoal and graphite in stillman and birn 'gamma', 11" x 14"

an inaccurate drawing of one of his drawings!  the man could draw, i tell you!  the reason i'm showing it here is because i sprayed it 

with this fixative, and it really does seem to prevent the charcoal and graphite from rubbing off on the opposite page.  it's the most non-toxic fixative i've ever used; it has three ingredients - water, grain alcohol and casein.  it smells faintly of grain alcohol so you can spray it inside with no worries.   since it has water in it, you have to spray on several light coatings if you're spraying paper.

* * *

kiki smith, brooklyn museum

for fellow lovers of kiki, here's a link to an interview with her.  you have to download it (audio only), but it's worth it...