'Draw Antonio, depict Antonio, draw and don't waste time'. A canvas of newspaper housed in the British Museum makes Michelangelo'south views on art education very clear. He wrote this in response to a especially poor effort by his educatee, Antonio Mini, who had attempted to re-create a Madonna and Child, penned past Michelangelo for his edification. While a lot may have inverse in art instruction over the last 500 years, the drawing remains, and if Michelangelo'south counsel barbarous on deaf ears back so, students take recently been taking his advice to heart.

Studies of the Virgin and Child (c. 1522–24), Michelangelo. Pen and brown ink, with copies in red chalk by Antonio Mini. British Museum

Studies of the Virgin and Child (c. 1522–24), Michelangelo. Pen and brownish ink, with copies in red chalk by Antonio Mini. The inscription reads: 'Disegnía antonío disegnia antonío / disegnia e no[north] p[er]der te[m]po' ('Draw Antonio, depict Antonio, depict and don't waste time'). © The Trustees of the British Museum

Over the by year and a half Sarah Jaffray and I accept welcomed over 700 fine fine art students to the museum's Prints and Drawings Study Room during more than than 100 workshops. Generously supported by the Bridget Riley Art Foundation, it was our mission to show them drawings past artists from the 15th century to those working today, and to encourage close looking and drawing from them. The British Museum's collection is a treasure business firm containing over 50,000 drawings and more 2 million prints, but when we showtime met with tutors at London art schools, we were told that students were likely to be hostile to drawing, and more likely to keep a blog than a sketchbook. To remedy this, we provided sketchbooks to them all upon arrival, and spent months scouring the breadth and depth of the museum'southward collection to provide them with the most exciting drawings we could find. The many discussions these works inspired informed the selection of an exhibition of seventy drawings – 'Lines of thought: Cartoon from Michelangelo to at present' – which volition soon begin touring the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, opening at Poole in September, before travelling to Hull and Belfast in 2017.

Studies for the Last Judgement (1534), Michelangelo. British Museum

Studies for the Last Sentence (1534), Michelangelo. © The Trustees of the British Museum

The exhibition is structured around the premise of cartoon every bit a thinking medium, with works grouped non chronologically, only according to the different types of thought process which drawing both records and demands. Initial thoughts, brainstorming, enquiry, association and development are all visible in drawings by artists working centuries apart, and bringing their work together demonstrates what can exist learned from looking at masters of the by in the context of today. The exhibition will exist the largest and most diverse group of drawings ever to be toured by the British Museum. I of the highlights is Michelangelo's dynamic report for the Terminal Judgement in the Sistine Chapel (1536–41), in which the creative person brainstorms diverse configurations of bodies in defiance of gravity, zooming in to focus on a figure, and then out again to accept in the whole grouping. Similar evidence of a mind in motion is a assuming cartoon past Picasso, one of hundreds fabricated in gild to develop his incendiary masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). The final works relating to both drawings take such authority information technology is refreshing to imagine them existing in a state of flux, and to be party to the decision-making procedure covered upwards in the finished works.

A clump of trees in a fenced enclosure (c. 1645), Rembrandt. British Museum

A clump of trees in a fenced enclosure (c. 1645), Rembrandt. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Tree study (1913), Piet Mondrian. British Museum

Tree study (1913), Piet Mondrian. © The Trustees of the British Museum

The juxtaposition of different drawings has resulted in numerous insights, for example in tree studies by Rembrandt and Piet Mondrian fabricated about 300 years apart. Both Dutch painters fabricated the studies en plein air for later evolution dorsum in the studio. Both too used a schematic line to correspond the human relationship betwixt solid and void in a tree'southward boughs, a rhythm of vertical and horizontal marks which resonates across centuries. Some other surprising correspondence is between a brooding pen drawing by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and ane by the Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu. The latter has described her works every bit 'narrative maps without a specific place or location', built up as a palimpsest of marks in response to architectural views, plans and diagrams. Piranesi's fantastical space was created in response to a ready blueprint by Filippo Juvarra (1678–1736). The artist altered the format simply retained the latter's innovative use of the scena per angolo double vanishing bespeak, inducing a similar multiplication of perspectives.

Interior of a circular building (1752–60), Giovanni Battista Piranesi. British Museum

Interior of a round building (1752–60), Giovanni Battista Piranesi. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Untitled (2002), Julie Mehretu. British Museum

Untitled (2002), Julie Mehretu. Reproduced past permission of the creative person. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum

Drawing from drawings is non an try at reproduction, but an attempt to find something out – both near what is going on in front of yous, and, equally Henri Matisse noted, nigh one's ain work. He claimed that he made copies in the Louvre in lodge to find himself. The results of our workshops were surprising and invigorating; responses ranged from physical poetry and oil painting to functioning, even so all began with the deed of drawing. While the exhibition has been formulated to entreatment to art students across all disciplines, the quality and variety of drawings will appeal to anyone with an interest in the procedure of cosmos, and encourage them to take a leafage out of Michelangelo's volume.

'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now' is at Poole Museum from 3 September–6 November, and subsequently tours to the Brynmor Jones Library Art Gallery, University of Hull (3 January–28 February 2017), the Ulster Museum, Belfast (ten March–vii May 2017), the New Mexico Museum of Fine art, Santa Atomic number 26 (25 May–17 September 2017) and RISD Museum, Providence (v October 2017–seven Jan 2018).