On drawing…

It starts in childhood with the first stroke of the pencil.

Being good at something makes you work to improve it!

I drew on the blackboard during the breaks, and in art class we could draw whatever we wanted.

I clearly remember becoming aware of the 3 dimensions. It was while visiting a friend who knew how to draw a car three dimensionally.

Just after the war I drew aerial battles between the British and the Germans.

I sketched motor races, particularly scenes with the motorbikes sliding around the turns, learning how to observe a moving subject.

I drew on the walls of the stables at my parents’ farm.

I sketched with tar on the silage silo before covering the drawings up - with tar.

I drew in my spare time during my military service, illustrated satirical magazines, sketched the little staff sergeant, also known as “the runt” – and decorated the assembly hall for the Shrovetide celebrations.

I was good at gymnastics, so I knew how the body moves and where the body is within a space.

As the member of a team of elite gymnasts in Turkey, I sketched “six gymnasts on the box” on the sides of the train, as we rattled through the devastation of

post-war Germany. There were motifs everywhere.

Croquis – quick drawing of the naked body – became part of my world when our art teacher invited me to join a drawing class taught by her. Art was an optional subject during my time in the military, and this was the first time I sketched a nude model.

Later on it was the painter Kaj Kylborg at the Funen Art Academy who opened my eyes, so to speak, with regards to seeing. With him as my teacher I drew

classical plaster figures, quick croquis sketches and studies of live models holding longer poses.

I continued croquis sketching at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen whilst also modelling live models.

Under Professor Gottfried Eickhoff I was given a sculptor’s perception of drawing. Eickhoff once said, with a twinkle in his eye,

A little boy who was good at drawing was asked how he did it. – It’s simple really, the boy said – I just imagine what I want to draw and then I draw a line around it...

After leaving the Academy I continued to draw at a graphics workshop and later on in my own studio together with a group of artists.

Throughout my life drawing has always been a way for me to express myself, and the lines are my impressions and fantasy. Pencil and sketchpad are never far from my hand.

Drawing has been both natural and fundamental to my work as a sculptor, where the human physique and body have been my motif both as a naturalist and in my more expressive or surrealist pieces with the anonymous rotund figures.

With this book I would like to retain the impression of the quick sketch.

Spring 2016

Keld Moseholm