When you’re busy raising hamsters, you’ve much less time for drawing fish. Alas. So, to while away the time not spent watching baby hamsters squirm, when I am not busy cooing — and saying “oh, look! how cute!” — I do this. Today’s copy after an old master is from Rubens’s famous painting of his second wife Helena.
Yep. Left hand again. If I keep this up, I’ll be afraid to draw with my right hand again!
Aletha Kuschan's Weblog 
It is amazing hat you do these left handed. Your brain is an amazing place and the hamsters are too cute.
it is pretty good
Aletha, when you are drawing with your left hand do you reverse what you are copying?
Dans l’original Helena est tournée vers la droite comme ta version ou vers la gauche?
encore, encore, c’est trés beau.
Paul, I’d agree that the brain is an amazing place. My brain, au contraire, is the respository of the lost knowledge about the last known location of my keys. But you are being sweet, and I say thanks. Shall I put one of the hamsters on a plane to Australia?
Aletha
Severny, thanks and what’s for supper? AK
Bene,
Helena est tournee vers la droite. But, funny you should ask. J’ai quelque fois fait des dessins (avec n’importe quel main) ou j’ai tournee l’objet a l’opposite, travaillant comme si c’est un exercise. J’utilise les photos ou dessins, je ne dessin d’apres la nature. Drawing in reverse this way, you can check the result using a mirror to see how close the resemblance is.
There is a possibility that Rubens did something like this in “Pan Reclining” at the National Gallery. http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?object=56608 A statue exists of the subject and is presumed to be Rubens’s source, but it’s oriented the opposite way. So either he observed it in a mirror, or made a drawing and afterwards a transfer of it, or redrew his own drawing in reverse. No one really knows. However he had a whole grab bag of ideas, as did 17th century artists generally, for altering motifs — in the spirit of innovation.
Aletha
ak