Vliegtuig 1906 - 1945

Reijer Stolk made this pencil drawing of an airplane, simply titled "Vliegtuig," and it lives now in the Rijksmuseum. It’s more about the process, not about the end result. The drawing's all about these tentative lines, a kind of searching, a real sense of trying to figure things out as you go. There’s a lightness to the touch, like he's barely pressing the pencil to the page, letting the form emerge gradually. Look at how he uses the hatching to suggest form, almost like he is building it. The texture is smooth, with the pencil marks clearly visible. The lines aren't harsh or defined; they’re soft, almost blurred, giving it this ephemeral, dreamlike quality. It reminds me a bit of some of those early technical drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, like Stolk is using art to explore the mechanics of flight. But there's also something very modern about the abstraction of the form. It’s not about perfect representation, it’s about capturing a feeling, an idea.