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Drawing in Monochrome
Hideyuki Sobue's Graphite Drawing entitled "Stug Beetle"

Drawing

in Monochrome

     Some artists produce numerous preparatory drawings over some time while others proceed to produce works directly. Some use photographic images to test out the composition, develop ideas and embody creative inspirations. Leonardo da Vinci could be the earliest artist who used camera obscura for his art practice. As is well known, more than a century later, Johannes Vermeer and Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto used this device proactively. Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol were both well known to use photographic images for their art practice in the modern era. Nowadays I often develop the idea through digital manipulation of my original drawings and pictures. The definition of "drawing" blurs, so does these works. Some of them are complete and ideal in their own rights while some works regarded as completed but I've never been satisfied. It can be said that the artist's life is the very nature of drawings towards more complete. In any case, it is drawing that plays a key role of human creativity. In the prehistoric age, drawing was there far preceded the invention of writings. Drawing is a unique fundamental tool, which is the source of paintings, symbols, signs and letters.

     As for me, pencil drawing is always my favourite practice in all art forms since my childhood. It is so simple that even an infant can do it yet it’s often so demanding…, certainly it’s nothing less than drawing that requires of all artists a great skill to observe, understand and depict things as they are. It is not easy. Needless to say, it is the most fundamental skill in all art practices. I always recall myself enjoying drawing with twigs and pebbles on the ground in my early childhood before I was given pencils and notebooks. Looking back, It was always autumn for me to launch a new thing or turn to a new direction. Then, in course of time, my conceptual drawing series "autumn leaves" were born. Since then I‘ve been exploring to enhance this concept in drawing. Talking about autumn leaves, for instance, they are nothing but the object fallen into decay, yet that is why they are totally "open" to viewers as if Vincent Van Gogh firstly introduced this concept when he painted "a pair of boots"; which provided the platform for Martin Heidegger's philosophical debates.  

     Here I assembled my drawings in monochrome, mostly those with graphite pencil and some with watercolour. 

Hideyuki Sobue's Graphite Drawing entitled "Memento #02"
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