Waag op de Nieuwmarkt te Amsterdam 1890 - 1946

This is Cornelis Vreedenburgh's pencil sketch of the Waag on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam. I love how immediate it feels. You know, the way a sketch can sometimes capture more than a finished painting? Look at the vertical hatching on the right-hand side; that's the side of the building. It feels almost like a kind of map of the artist's movement, or the time he spent looking, carefully and intensely. And the way he's described the architectural detail; there’s a kind of gentle quality to the light touch. It's a reminder that artmaking is always a process, not a fixed thing. It's like a conversation between the artist and the world, a back-and-forth of looking and responding. You can almost see the artist figuring things out as he goes along, which is what makes it feel so alive. Think of the drawings of Giorgio Morandi; you can see that kind of care and observation in his work too. It's all about that process of seeing, feeling, and then trying to capture it all on paper.