Feodosia 1925

Konstantin Bogaevsky made this drawing, Feodosia, with pencil, and it's all about the way he builds up tone and texture. He's not trying to make it look photographic, more like he's feeling his way through the scene. You can really see it in the way he renders the trees in the foreground. They're not just shapes, but a whole bunch of little marks, almost like he's scribbling. It's like he's trying to capture the essence of the trees rather than just drawing what they look like. The rooftops are described using a shorthand too, blocks of tone that have the effect of stylising the town, evoking something ancient. It reminds me of Cezanne, he was another painter who wasn't afraid to break things down into simple shapes and build them back up again. Both artists knew that art isn't about copying reality, it's about creating a new one. It's about using the materials at hand to conjure a feeling.