Early Influences: How Albrecht Dürer Changed my Art
It started in high school…
I had one good art teacher in high school. I think I was a junior at the time. The assignment was to recreate a famous artwork. We had a somewhat random selection of famous art from different time periods. All were very large posters that took up the majority of our 6 ft. art tables. I don’t remember any of the other choices but my eyes landed on one image I knew was my best chance at success.
This was it
I had no idea who the artist was but it was an animal. (I still prefer to draw animals.) My teacher gave me a set of various size pens to recreate this massive poster on an 8x10 in. sheet of paper. I loved every minute of it.
The more I drew, the more I discovered just how detailed and thought-out the design was. I loved the variety of textures and detail. The cracks and imperfections in shapes definitely made it into my personal drawings after school.
AD
I don’t remember when, but at some point I was in humanities class and I saw a very familiar signature in my textbook. I scanned through the text and found a name, Albrecht Dürer.
It was the early days of the internet and my search for other images was slow; but eventually, I found more drawings, paintings, and engravings. Though I wasn’t enamored with the subject matter of most of his work, The level of texture applied to well-defined forms challenged me to work harder. I focused on shading and became a better observer of anatomy after studying Dürer’s work.
I still reference his work
Whenever I need ideas or inspiration, Dürer’s work still makes it to my Pinterest boards. I’ve borrowed his watercolor techniques in almost all of my current paintings.
Rabbit in Watercolor
Albrecht Dürer, 1502