22 Artists Magazine May 2020
Build DRAWING BOARD
Rubens’ study for The Presentation
in the Temple (page 20).
Rubens often started with a small
painted sketch, like the one for The
Triumph of Henry IV (page 21), to
work out complex compositions in
a miniaturized, more manageable
size before moving to the large-scale
painting stage. He frequently used
these small paintings as a sales pitch
or guide for his workshop assistants,
who sometimes helped him paint his
large “machine” paintings, as many art
historians aptly call them. But the
small painted sketches’ primary pur-
pose was artistic, allowing Rubens to
compare and test each image’s broadcolor-value relationships and rhythmic
flows in one all-encompassing glance.
Before you actually begin work on
a canvas—particularly a complex and
imposing one—it helps to make a
slightly more defined sketch and/or
a quick color and value study in pastel
or paint. This will enable you to better
define your visual goals and keep
them in mind when going forward.DETAILS
No color comps survive for Rubens’
Daniel in the Lions’ Den (page 21), but
he clearly spent a lot of time preplan-
ning the form of each lion and theCLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT
Lioness Seen From the Rear,
Turning to the Left
by Peter Paul Rubens
ca 1613; black chalk with touches of
yellow, heightened with white oil or
body color and gray wash, 15⁹⁄₁^6 x9¼
THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON
Lion Resting
by Peter Paul Rubens
ca 1613; black chalk and brown wash
heightened with white,
11¹⁄₁^6 x16₁³⁄₁^6
THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON
Lion
by Peter Paul Rubens
ca 1613, black chalk heightened with
white, 9₁⁵⁄₁^6 x11⅛
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.