[Kimber Scott]

I recently took a 19th Century French Art and Culture class and was rather impressed with the fact artists worked from sketches and drawings for their paintings. Naive me, I assumed they had set everything up in front of them to paint from life. I never realized most paintings were compilations of different pieces of architecture and bodies saved over time in sketch books, or drawn specifically for a particular painting. Jacques Louis David painted many a Napoleon from sketches. Napoleon couldn't, and wouldn't, sit long enough for a portrait. Apparently, there were enough sketches floating around of Napoleon's head to do an infinitesimal number of paintings and sculptures of the Emperor.

Here is an example where Degas used a drawing to create a painting. I'm wondering, does anyone here work like this? Would you mind posting your sketch and painting? I'm trying it for the first time. I'll post later, if the results aren't overly disastrous.