Roger Conlon
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Follow a leader

Picasso and lines of the old masters

‘...I like to lose myself in Michelangelo, as I would in the majesty of a mountain landscape’

Someone passed him a photo of one of the figures in the Sistine Chapel.

‘ Ahh!’ he said, placing his figure on the toe of the youth and following the graceful outline .’What a feeling of pleasure I get when I go over this line  ... but Raphael was the sky itself: what serenity in his line ; what mastery ! It wasn,t Leonardo who invented aviation ; it was Raphael!’

I can still see Picasso’s stubby thumb on the photo, and I have never been able to look at the the figures in the Sistine Chapel since then without feeling as though he were with me , and lovingly tracing with that thumb of his, from toe to hip and from hip to shoulder, the living, tormented lines of those characters in eternal converse with the gods’

From Renoir to Picasso
Michel Georges Michel
Victor Gollancz London 1957

Follow the line of  a Michelangelo figure to understand Picasso’s enthusiasm. It does not matter if it looks ‘wrong’. If you are really worried about being accurate :

-  trace it slowly or
 -  draw it upside down or
-   use a grid to copy it

Navigate your own  way as Picasso did. Feel the character of their  lines and through them  their  understanding of  life itself.