I have been studying some of the grand masters recently and challenging myself to sketch them and/or some of their works. So I spent a couple of days focussing on Rembrandt.
I really liked the painting he did of his father – I ended up sketching his father’s portrait on the same page in my sketch book as the one of him as a young man. This kind of remnded me of the song by Neil Young “Old Man” with the lyrics:
“Old man take a look at my life I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that’s true” – Neil Young
I also really liked this self-portrait he did in middle age (below) And the detail from of “the father” from his “Return of the Prodigal Son” was very poignant in his rendition of the aging( but loving and forgiving) father of the Prodigal Son. I found it to be amazing and I loved skeching that to try to capture the mood that Rembrandt conveyed.