Animals through the eyes of an artist [antikvár]

An artist in action n artist's sketchbook is a window into his mind, a diary revealing the stages through which his work progresses as it leads up to becoming a finished painting. With Ralph Thompson there are three such stages: the lightning sketches which he calls his 'shorthand', the 'homework' stage of a charcoal drawing and the 'doodle' stage of drawing with the brush. All three are represented in these pages, a selection from the dozens of sketchbooks at his studio in Berkshire. At the shorthand stage he uses a fountain pen to make a very precise record in a small space. Many animals are difíicult to approach in the wild, because of their timidity. It is sometimes possible to get within 15 yds of, say, a small antelope, but as soon as it notices the intrusion it will bound away. This means that the artist has to 'freeze' a fleeting impression on his memory, then get it down on paper as rapidly as possible, while the impression is still vivid. Ralph Thompson can sketch the outline of an animal and put in the few teliing lines that make each species unique in a matter of seconds. 'You train your reactions to be very quick,' he says, 'almost as if you were hunting.' With his on-the-spot record as a guide, Ralph Thompson next works up a drawing to approximately its final size, and fills in details or experiments with variations in an animaTs pose.