Ornamentstudier 1906

Niels Larsen Stevns made this page of ornament studies with watercolor and pencil, and you can just feel the process. It’s so clear that the artist is trying out different ideas and motifs on a single page. There's a beautiful contrast between the controlled watercolor washes of the flower and the tentative pencil lines above it. Look at the bottom right corner of the flower, where the wash bleeds slightly beyond the pencil outline, giving the image a kind of soft, porous, dissolving quality. You get the feeling that this isn’t about perfection. It reminds me of the sketchbooks of Paul Klee, both artists playing with form and color and embracing the inherent messiness and uncertainty of the creative process. It’s like they’re saying, "Here’s a thing I’m trying to figure out, but I don’t need to know all the answers just yet."