I read that Henri Matisse acquired the fluidity of lines in his drawings through hours of practice copying Persian drawings. My attempts to capture the essence of the line quality of these drawings myself was humbling. One can never quite capture the precision of an ink line with pencil, but the effort and forced observation, I think improves line quality regardless. And I think that was what Matisse was trying for in his own copying - an unfettered unembelished line that could form a delicate bone structure in a drawing. In the appropriated mounted horseman that I drew from a miniature painting most of the lines were drawn from memory, adding structure to a fragmentary notation.
