Painting of the Day: Letter from the Front

Letter from the Front (1947)
by Nikolaj Borisovich Terpsikhorov (1890-1960)
Oil on canvas, 130 x 170 cm

This is a painting that I saw in the Springville Museum of Art in Utah earlier this year (the museum has a large collection of Russian art, a bit unexpectedly I would say.) This painter knows how to build structure with each paintbrush, light and dark colours working together to create volume. Before he applied the paint the artist made a very careful drawing on the canvas. 

As an art student I´m  learning how to see and how to draw.  I spend many hours copying drawings of classical sculptures and it´s supposed to be an exact copy. Here´s my latest attempt:

My copy of Charles Bargue´s drawing of the bust of Agrippa

It´s a very tedious process. I draw some lines and then I realize that my lines doesn't really go the same way as the lines I´m copying. So I erase and start all over. And when I think it´s OK my teacher ask something like this: What is happening here? and then I see that my line is 1/2 millimeter off or that my shape is not really looking like the shape I´m copying, It´s a very tedious process, a very, very slow process. This process teaches me to see.

"When you know the rules, you can break the rules" 

Farigh Ghaderi (my teacher)