“Renoir believed strongly in going to museums to learn from other artists,” says Sylvie Patry, curator of the Paris exhibit. She paraphrases Renoir: “One develops the desire to become an artist in front of paintings, not outdoors in front of beautiful landscapes.”"Renoir's Controversial Second Act", by Richard Covington, Smithsonian magazine, February 2010

So I'll paraphrase this even further. Rather than getting a simulated 'outdoors' via photos of people and critters, I'll visit online museums, and sketch. My theory is if I just look at 'nature', I am looking at it with the 'natural' eye. But the artist's eye is a trained eye, thus her perceptions are different. If I want to strengthen my artist's eye, I need to study the works of artists. (As wise words have advised to, "Change the nature of perception" to solve dilemmas {- BoHS}, I adapt this to a possibly mundane aspect. Yet the more I struggle towards even this "perfectibility", I transcend the mundane.)

At the very least, I get to fully enjoy whatever piece I'm drawing, to whatever extent the web photo allows me. I did see tonight's piece in person, for it was at the Getty Villa when we visited last August. It won't be there much longer, though, for it returns to Italy's Museo Archaeologico Nazionale after February 8, 2010.

I adore the powerful muscularity in this sculpure. I sketched from two different photos, one with lovely shadows and no distracting background and one at Wiki 2,220 × 1,984 pixels big.

Chimaera di Arezzo 400-375 BCE, Etruscan