Scholars Mind

Masterpieces in Draft

Finished works don’t materialize out of thin air. Authors, artists, musicians, architects, animators—nearly all creators go through one or more rough drafts before coming up with a finished product. For the drafts below, consider how much the work changes from one iteration to the next, and research the techniques that artists can use to transfer their sketches onto canvases.

Munch's screamer began as a man leaning on a railing, gazing away at a blood-red sky. Then Munch deleted the face — and made the universal image of anxiety.

Key concepts

Version Versus Copy
A draft searches; a copy repeats. Van Gogh's three near-identical Bedrooms are deliberate copies — he wanted spares of one he loved — while Munch's Scream reinvents his earlier Despair rather than duplicating it.
Pentimento
A visible trace of an earlier version showing through a painting, where the artist changed their mind — Italian for 'repentance'. It is a draft the finished work never entirely hid, and X-rays now reveal them everywhere.

Every work — at a glance

  • Mona Lisa — Leonardo da Vinci (painting)

    Leonardo's Louvre portrait of Lisa Gherardini, and the disputed 'Isleworth' Mona Lisa — a younger-looking second version some call his earlier draft, others a later copy.

  • Bedroom in Arles (Three Versions) — Vincent van Gogh (painting)

    Three nearly identical paintings of Van Gogh's simple bedroom — the 1888 original (later flood-damaged) and two 1889 copies — clashing lilac walls, yellow furniture and a red blanket to 'express absolute repose'.

  • Despair (1892) and the Scream (1893) — Edvard Munch (painting)

    Despair shows a melancholy man leaning on a railing under a blood-red sky, looking away; The Scream keeps the same setting but turns the figure into a faceless face confronting you, hands to its head.

  • Dance (I) (1909) and Dance (II) (1910) — Henri Matisse (painting)

    Dance (I) is a paler, study-like first version of figures joined in a ring; Dance (II), made a year later for the collector Shchukin, intensifies it into vivid red dancers against deep blue and green.

What to know

  1. 01
    How much does a work change between versions? Often the decisive move is subtraction: Munch reached The Scream by deleting the man's face, and with it any way to stand outside the feeling and watch someone else have it. 'Finished' turns out to be a decision, not a property of the object — Van Gogh's three Bedrooms are all complete paintings, and only history calls two of them studies.

Across subjects

Moving a small sketch onto a big canvas is applied geometry. Artists 'square up' — grid both and copy cell by cell, scaling exactly — or 'pounce', pricking holes along the lines and tapping charcoal through to leave a dotted guide. Both keep proportion while changing size, the same scaling a mapmaker or engineer uses.

Theme connection

Is a draft merely a lesser step, or valuable in itself? One side says the final version is the destination and the drafts are scaffolding to discard. The other says the drafts hold the thinking — and with three Bedrooms or two Mona Lisas, it is unclear which one is 'the' work.

Practice

Check what you've read

Pick the best answer — you'll see why each option is right or wrong.

Question 1 of 2

SCIWhat do we call the grid method artists use to scale a small sketch up onto a large canvas?

Question 2 of 2

ARTVan Gogh's three near-identical Bedroom in Arles paintings are BEST described as —