Skitser og rids af dyr, bl.a. hest og abe 1900 - 1905

This is one page from a sketchbook by Niels Larsen Stevns, with light pencil sketches of animals including a horse and a monkey. You can see the bare bones of the idea right here. I imagine the artist quickly capturing the essence of movement and form. It's like he’s saying, "I'm just gonna put this down real quick." He’s probably in a zoo, and trying to distill the animal's spirit in these very quick marks. These kinds of sketches remind me that drawing is fundamentally about thinking. It becomes a record of an artist’s investigation and a way of understanding the world through close observation. You can see Niels trying to find the energy of these animals, how he’s trying to get inside them. And through that simple act of mark-making, we get invited into that process too. He is in conversation with the masters, such as Delacroix and Rubens who also drew animals. What an ongoing exchange of ideas artists share across time, inspiring one another’s creativity!