When,a long time ago,I tried to master the piece of music “Take five”,composed by Dave Brubeck,on the piano,I had to drop a lot of habits.
Brubeck drew inspiration for this style of music in the spring of 1958 during a U,S. State- Department-sponsored tour of EurAsia. After learning from native symphony musicians about the form, he was inspired to create an album that deviated from the usual 4/4 time of jazz and experimented with the exotic styles he had experienced abroad. Especially the unusual quintuple (5/4) time from which it derives its name,made this piece of music attractive but difficult to play.

The same experience I’ve had,when I started with my first of five lessons in portrait -drawing.Here the main new way of looking for me was through “Tone”,or seeing planes of light and dark,instead of sharp lines and lots of details.Corné,my art teacher,continued to emphasize this.
It was almost a Zen-like experience,whereby Zen involves dropping illusion and seeing things without distortion created by your own thoughts.

With this in mind I tried to draw a portrait of our son Michel,where the portrait gained in liveliness by applying various tone-values.

Michel

Maybe,you’ll find it interesting to see directly into the style and mastery of Corné,by looking at his website https://corneakkers.com/

I really (un)learned a lot during my interesting lessons.