Degas, the old man mad about art and Richard Williams

Just watched an 'omnibus' special about Degas.

It was interesting to learn about the varying approaches to line versus colour.
His mentor Ingres influenced his use of line,contour and shading (colour was considered nothing).
This is in stark contrast to the later boldly coloured work. (influenced at first by Titian)

I really like the sketches and rough studies rather than the finished painting. There are feint grids on the 'sketches' which i assume are for composition but i've not read about that yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Degas

I'm sure, for some people, this is all old news but not to me.
The only other time i'd heard of his work was from Richard Williams (another master animator) in the Animators survival kit animated dvds.

I've also been watching some of Richard Williams commercials (and listening to his splinedoctors podcast). I remember many of the commercials from Uk tv and some were new to me. Brilliant stuff. I really wish commercials were like this now. I'd recommend viewing them for anyone into animation or art.