Il Guercino, was Giovanni Francesco Barbieri’s nickname, a very prolific Bolognese artist of the Baroque period.

This session is dedicated to copying a few of his incredibly lively, fresh and expressive sketches created with pen and ink and brush.

Guercino’s sketches show great empathy toward his fellow human emotions, lives, toils. These quick vignettes are very essential but masterfully executed and often tell an emotional story or a joyous moment: a few brushstrokes with ink, some tratteggio with a quill, it’s all it took for him to evoke the poignant moment of a father saying goodbye to the son going to war, or the loving gaze of a mother for her baby, or Mary overwhelmed by the Angel of Annunciation.

This Session of Drawing With is dedicated to work in this very quick yet extremely effective technique to capture the fleeting or lasting emotions we all experience in our lives.

(Drawing: Guercino study of a woman with hand held to her breast)

Materials:

• Drawing paper of good-decent quality, you can also use hot press watercolor paper.
• A graphite pencil (HB or B), brown ink or brown watercolor, pen and nib, a couple of watercolor brushes, round, # 2 and 8 or so, either synthetic or natural sable