Day 26: Pentimento #30SAL

Today is the 26th day of our 30 day creative challenge. Wednesday is specifically a word challenge. Today’s word is an art vocabulary word, great for drawings and paintings.

Sometimes when you draw with soft graphite and then erase your drawing, you can still see a some of the previous lines on the paper. Those of you who have drawn with vine or willow charcoal will know that the material allows you to draw and then wipe your lines away, leaving the ghost image faintly on the paper. This opens up the paper to the potential for more drawing on top. In class we call these ghost marks pentimenti.

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville (a highly influential artist that you should know about) makes giant figurative work with charcoal and paint on paper and canvas. Years ago she had a happy accident that changed how she worked. Since charcoal creates a lot of dust, she keeps a vacuum nearby, and one day in the studio she accidentally vacuumed the drawing right off the canvas. Delighted at the effect, she began to use her Hoover as a large eraser for subtraction. What followed was a highly influential series of figurative works, in which different figures in different poses were drawn one on top of the other, overlapping to show changes in gender, form, movement, and time.