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

Niels Larsen Stevns made this pen and ink drawing, "Udkast til 'Kristus velsigner de små børn'", at an unknown date, but it lives at the SMK in Copenhagen. What strikes me immediately are the quick, hatched lines. It’s like he’s thinking through form, not just depicting it. Look at the way he defines the figures. There's this urgent quality to the marks, a real sense of discovery in the process, not unlike my own painting style. You can almost feel him searching for the right angle, the perfect curve. It's interesting that the artist uses simple hatching to evoke depth, shadow, and texture. The lack of detail almost forces you to fill in the blanks, to participate in the creation of the image. In a way, it reminds me of the rapid sketches of Käthe Kollwitz, where the raw emotion of the line is more important than precise representation. This kind of immediacy leaves space for ambiguity, for multiple readings.