This past week saw me purchase a small artwork. I went to the local Saturday market at which there are several dealers of curios. One of them had a number of old prints and some watercolours. But a small black and white image caught my eye. I had a cursory glance at the piece and liked what I saw. The stall holder said it was an etching and that he had been unable to decipher the signature. I will state here that so far I also have failed but since I liked it and the price was right I acquired it.I took it home and as you can see it is a fine work with a great degree of finesse but here is the hook. It is not an etching. After a better study of this piece, I have come to the conclusion that it is actually an original #pencil/graphite drawing. This certainly makes the piece more interesting. It is done with very little shading but is worked with lines. This style of work is called #crosshatch. The more lines you add the deeper the tone. This can be and is very tedious work. ‘Shading’ or ‘colouring in’ is possibly the norm. One tends to find this type of work in etchings/engravings (often not to this degree of finesse) and is not as popular as a drawing technique.

I attach an image of the signature, in the hopes that my readers might have better luck than I at deciphering the signature. In the second image, one can see the myriad of fine lines which are used the give the drawing depth and tonality. A superb #drawing, even if I don’t know who the artist is. And I can’t shake a feeling that I should know who this artist is.