From the category archives:

Drawing

Speed

by Henk ter Heide on Saturday April 17, 2010

Sometimes I get reminded of all the stupid things I was taught when I was a child. Things like it’s better to quite an activity then not to finish the project you’re working on right now.

The purpose of this sketch was to find out if it’s possible to get these nice color mixes with color hatching while at the same time retaining some control over the color.
As it turns out, that is possible.

Because it’s easier to color between the lines I had helped myself by drawing some random lines.
But by doing so it felt as though this was supposed to be a real drawing.
So after I had colored a few panels and felt that I had nothing more to learn from this sketch and I wanted to put it on this site and move on.

But then I heard the very angry voice of my mother in my head. “You never finish anything!”. “You should finish what you start!”. “You are always procrastinating”. And drawing lost all of it’s fun.
That was how it used to be some 40 years ago.
At one point I took up dancing. Which was fun apart from the fact that I was the only guy present. (Which is fun when you’re 16 but not when you’re 13 and all the girls are better dancers then you are.)
You wouldn’t believe how mad my mother became when I announced that was going to quit.

After Mr. “nobody’s” comment I started thinking again and remembered that this sketch only has a limited goal.

Thinking about this some more I did realize one thing though. What is missing from my current way of working is speed. Since my best drawings where kind of accidental there is not much purpose to my thinking about what I’m doing on a drawing by drawing base.

I do realize that figurative drawings would sell much better then abstract. Drawing abstract is a way of experimenting with techniques without having the straight jacked of having to draw objects that are prospectively correct. (If nothing else I’ll always be a perfectionist).
I do want to go back to drawing more recognizable shapes. But only if I can find a way to draw the complicated world in which I’m living.

color hatching sketch

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Colored stripes

by Henk ter Heide on Friday April 9, 2010

Very soon after starting this drawing I realized that I was doing something else then I had planned. But even so it seemed like fun to finish the drawing the way I started to find out what would happen.

This afternoon I looked back at all my drawing because I’m making a page with my best drawings. It turns out that the drawings that I like best are the result of mistakes I made.
Mistakes that led me to ideas.

And indeed while I was doing this drawing I thought of something I’m going to do tomorrow.

Colored lines

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Color hatching 1

by Henk ter Heide on Monday April 5, 2010

It does seem to be possible to control the colors while I’m color hatching and still get some interesting colors.
Of course this drawing is only a proof of concept. Doesn’t look like much, does it.

Turns out that there is a way to get the colors to interact. I can use either the lightest yellow or the white pencil to blend colors.
If I use yellow to blend blues I get a lot of green colors.
If I use white something happens. Not quite sure what.
I have to do some more experimenting to find out.

Color hatching 1

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Love and fear

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 4, 2010

My fountain pen is gliding over the paper. Up, down, up, down.
I love to watch while the black is slowly consuming the white paper. I could do this all day.
But I won’t.
If I just paint the whole paper black there isn’t much to look at.
But I would want to…

Then comes the hard part.
Although the colors I get with this color hatching technique are beautiful. They are also completely unpredictable.
I don’t like things that are unpredictable.

The shorter the lines, the more colors I use, the more unpredictable and beautiful the result.
Or I can begin with a layer of some color and then place a few lines on top. That’s far more predictable but not as beautiful.

I’m mostly fearful of my next few drawings.
I want to try to make kind of a landscape using my new color technique. But I’m not sure how.
If I can’t predict the colors how can I get them to interact?

Get a print of this drawing

Love and fear

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Color islands

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday March 23, 2010

For the last few years I’ve been playing a kind of game with my self. I look at an object; a tree, car or park bench. And while I’m looking at it I try to imagine it.
Doing that feels as a kind of memory practice.
That is, I’m not sure whether I’m improving my memory. But it feels like that.

The problem until recently was that it also invoked a very strong feeling. So strong that I never knew whether it was a good feeling or not.
But a few weeks ago I noticed that the feeling had changed. It’s still a very strong feeling and I still don’t recognize it. But I’m now sure that’s a good feeling.

So the last few weeks I’ve been looking a lot. At everything around me. At everything I would want to draw.
And I finally realized something that’s probably obvious for people who are not autistic. But I never saw it.
The background of an object is very important.
A tree is nothing without the park or forest it belongs to.
The reflection of an early morning sun in a black wet road is nothing without the trees and the cars that surround it.

So for the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about how to draw background. Specifically about a color pencil drawing technique I read about years ago where you hash colors together.
In this study I’m finding out how you can mix colors.
I’m finding that the nice part of this technique that you can’t actually predict what kind of colors you’ll get after mixing a few colors.

I’m must try this on a somewhat larger scale.

Color islands

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Playing with pebbles

by Henk ter Heide on Saturday March 20, 2010

I wanted to play a little with the pebble shape. It seemed like a nice idea to suggest the shapes of pebbles touching each other by only coloring parts of the shapes.
But for some reason it didn’t work.
Maybe I used to many pebbles or maybe the hole idea is impossible.

For now I compromised and draw something a bit like what I had in mind.
But I will be coming back to this idea.

Playing with pebbles study 1

Playing with pebbles study 2

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Pebbles

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday March 16, 2010

I started this drawing 5 times before I was satisfied with the result.
The first time was when I got the idea. But I didn’t like the shapes.
The last time I realized that if I wanted to contrast between white and black I should use a pen that’s really black instead of grayish.

Pebbles