Udkast til "Kristus velsigner de små børn" 1937 - 1938

This is an ink sketch by Niels Larsen Stevns, a preliminary idea for a painting called "Christ Blessing the Children". Look at the economy of line, how much is said with so little. See the child at the bottom, a few short strokes and some filled-in circles, immediately legible. The whole piece has a frenetic energy, which is what makes sketches so exciting – you get to see the artist thinking! You get to see how quickly they are processing the idea, how instinctive the process is. I am reminded of Picasso’s sketches, the way he was able to capture the essence of a form with just a few lines. Sketching is like a form of visual note-taking, a way for artists to quickly record their ideas and observations and the beauty of it is that, as we see here, that record is often a work of art in itself.