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It’s amazing how you can walk into a room full of 17th century Dutch paintings, take a quick glance around as you move through,  and know immediately when your eye falls on a painting by Vermeer. I could spend the rest of my life trying to do what he does with light, but I figure the only way to begin to learn it is to draw it. This is “The Astronomer,” the only one of Vermeer’s that is currently in residence here at the Louvre (“The Lacemaker” is out on loan).

I was in this wing in search of Rembrandt,  and found the roomful a couple of rooms along from Vermeer. This self-portrait (below) is from 1660. There are a few here from 25 years earlier. I love how honestly he shows the changes time and experience have wrought on his face, though through my own limitations, I took about 25 years off again.

The first try was way too small, and when I went closer to see some details that I hadn’t been able to see from the seat on the other side of the room, I hadn’t left myself room to have a prayer of including them. So I started again at twice the size (still a thumbnail of a detail; the painting is about 3×4′). As with Vermeer: the light, the light, though with Vermeer I always have the impression  of  light’s falling on the subject, whereas with Rembrandt self-portraits, I usually have more of a feeling that he is emerging, partway only, out of a palpable darkness.

Both graphite pencil on 4″×6″ sketchbook  paper.

Munchkin and I are at the Louvre. I communed with one of Michelangelo’s “Captives” while she went in search of more recent European sculpture.

I was lukewarm about returning to the Louvre, and came mostly to accompany M, but this time spent drawing made it more than worth the price of admission, and the wait.