by Henk ter Heide on Saturday October 20, 2007
Taking the different elements I’ve tested and putting it into one drawing.
I must admit that I’ve put this drawing of for a bit.
Although I’m almost certain that I won’t fail. I’ve thought about it and tested the different bits of this drawing. But this is the first time that I’ll be putting a drawing like this together.
Tree and clouds
This tree stood outside of my kitchen window a few years ago. The left part is still there but the councel cut the right part down. Presumably they were afraid that it would fall over and kill a few cyclist.
With my last drawing I wanted to know whether it was possible to see the branch through the leafs. But although it is possible I thought it would be nice not to see the branches but to see the sky through the leafs.
So I drew the branches with yellow pencil. Then I drew the blue part of the sky. By this time a large part of the branches had turned green. Drawing in the leafs meant that the branches disappeared.
The other reason why I put this drawing of was that I was thinking about what to draw next. I think I’ll leave the trees for a while.
The next project logical project is to learn to draw water. Much harder then trees. But many of the drawings I want to make have water in them. Mastering water should expend the sort of drawings I can do.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday October 15, 2007
Trying out a new method to sharpen my pencils.
I’ve been reading that some people use a piece of sanding paper to sharpen their pencils. I never saw the point in that (if you pardon the pun). But now I’ve started drawing with the side of the pencil it make all the more sense. With sandpaper I can get a much sharper point then using a table top sharpener. Which means that I can use a larger part of the pencil.
That gives me much more control over the drawing and mixing of colors.
Tree 8
For this drawing I started out with light and dark blue and mixed yellow in. That is, I try to cover the paper with blue before applying the yellow. It seems that I get the best green when I use the yellow as a blending pencil.
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by Henk ter Heide on Saturday October 13, 2007
Finding tree colors.
I’ve been experimenting with a technique that isn’t completely new but I haven’t used it very much. A few months ago I tried this technique for a while. But I didn’t know what to do with it, so I forgot all about it.
According to my dictionary this should be called an underhanded pencil hold. (I’m not completely sure of that.) I hold my pencil almost flat. Almost parallel to the table. That way I can draw with the side of the pencil instead of using the point.
Drawing this way I get a much broader line. It’s a bit like painting with a broad brush.
The downside is that I loose some control but that doesn’t matter for this drawing. It actually gives the drawing a lively feeling.
Sea 5
The problem with this drawing is that I’m mixing colors that aren’t suited for a seascape.
They are, how ever, suited for a tree.
In my next drawing I’m going to combine this technique and color mix and hopefully find a method to draw trees.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday September 3, 2007
Mixing colors
After making my first drawing with my new pencil box I’m a bit at a loss.
Until now I would look into my (old) 72 set pencil box and chose colors that best fit the drawing I wanted to make. But now I can make a few hondred colors and I don’t even know what they look like. Every time I mix two (or more) colors I get a surprise. A nice surprise in that I get very nice colors. But you can’t draw if you don’t know what colors you have.
Test
Over the next week I will test which colors I can make by mixing two pencils with each other. Today I mixed the first four color pencils in my box with every other color.
Mixing colors 5A
Mixing colors 5B
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Yu Chung Peter Chan draws very nice fantasy pictures.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday August 27, 2007
Cloud colors
After doing a lot of sketches it’s clear that I’m doing something wrong. None of my clouds look like real clouds. After studying them some more I realized that there was something wrong with the colors I’m using. It’s seems that I don’t have cloud colors in my pencil box.
That means that I will have to make them.
Mixing colors
It is possible to make new colors by mixing the colors you already have.
To try the concept I started out with mixing some red’s and blue’s…
Mixing colors 1
and got this.
I didn’t like this very much. It seems so grainy.
Drawing book
A few days later I came accross a book about mixing colors with color pencil.
It seems that you have to blend the colors you’ve mixed.
I mixed some more colors this time using a piece of toilet paper to blend them…
Mixing colors 2
and got this. Looks a lot better although still a bit grainy.
Purple music
Reading a little more in my book I found that you can use hues of grey to make a color darker or lighter. Since I’m still looking for a method to do my drawing “Purple music” I tried some pinks.
Mixing colors 3
I don’t like this. It’s more of a grey/black then pink.
After thinking about it some more I realized that I probably put to much pressure on the pencil when I was coloring grey.
What would happen if I used a little less grey and a little more pink.
For this study I used a little darker hue of pink.
Mixing colors 4
This is better.
The first four are mixes of black and purple and very dark grey and purple. The bottom row are mixes of light grey and purple. Alternating one layer of grey and two layers of grey.
Playing with blue
I also tried some blue thinking that it would be a good idea to have an other go at drawing a starfield.
The left most blue oblong are actually two hues of blue and two hues of grey. The top half consists of dark blue with light grey and the bottom half of dark grey with light blue.
I wanted to know whether it is possible to get the same hue using different combinations.
It is possible!
That could be handy to know.
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Would you like a bit of fun?
Court Jones draws caricatures of famous people.
Be sure to also visit his sketchbook!
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday August 17, 2007
Save drawings
Before I realized that photographs and drawings aren’t supposed to look alike I did like to draw. I just was afraid of the end result.
So to taste the joy of drawing without having to be afraid of the end result I drew a lot of Intersecting bottles. But there was only a limited amount of joy I could get out of drawing intersecting bottles. When it bored me I’d try my hand at some abstract art.
Shapes and feelings
I tried but never succeeded. I ran into a few problems.
I didn’t know what shapes I should draw. Is it abstract if you just draw a few colored rectangle? Apparently since Mondrian did it. But I didn’t know that as a child and thought that drawing rectangles would be boring.
Somewhere I read or heard that abstract drawings should be about feelings. But how do you draw anger or falling in love? I could draw two people fighting or kissing but that wouldn’t be abstract.
My abstract drawings
The last few weeks I’ve been doing some abstract drawings. The funny thing is that I never set out to draw abstract. I just drew a few pictures that came to mind.
- Trying to perfect a technique I drew Mask.
- Not ready to admit defeat, I tried what a spoiled drawing could have been and produced Patched.
- While trying to draw a colored river I drew Tentacles.
- Trying to fight my fear for drawing unstructured I made Who’s afraid of yellow, red (and blue).
- A piece of carpet on the BBC show Click (of all places) remembered me of something that looked like Sideways.
- While being bored to tears I close my eyes and saw “Shifted”.
Shifted
The rules
After doing a few abstract drawings I’ve found that there are a few rules that make it much easier to make abstract drawings.
- Drawing abstract isn’t a short cut. All of the above drawings took me several days to complete. Whether the portrait you draw is any good or not, it will only take an hour to complete.
- It’s very easy to find a shape to draw because anything will do. Use the shape of what ever is in front of you. If you don’t like that shape add a few line (like I did in Intersecting bottles).
A technique I often use is just closing my eyes and using the shapes and colors I see at the inside of my eyelids. (It helps if you face a dim lamp while doing this).
- Drawing abstract has everything to do with feelings but that doesn’t mean you can chose to draw an emotion.
Abstract is about the emotions you feel while your drawing. Your feelings will influence the colors you chose. If you’re feeling depressed you’ll chose darker colors then when you’re happy.
When I was drawing Tentacles I had the eerie feeling I was putting an invisible message into my drawing.
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A fitting site for an article about abstract art. I don’t think I would ever have thought of this but you can even use leftover paint to produce very nice abstract paintings.
Be sure to also read the rest of the site. Anne-Laure Djaballah does very nice abstract paintings.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday August 8, 2007
Skill
Since there are no easy practical techniques to blend colors around details I’ll have to learn the skill to do it by hand.
Crossing lines
This doesn’t seem to be very difficult. Now I’m be finally ready to do “Purple music”.
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On the Ouch club you’ll find a lot of lovely simple drawings.
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday August 3, 2007
Series
This is the last part of a four part series to find an easy technique to draw a dark color around light colored details. The series consist of:
Finishing touches
After doing A quick and dirty way of drawing fireworks I wasn’t satisfied with the color of the night sky. It was far to light for my taste.
The point of that drawing was to find if it would be possible to get a dark sky without putting very much “work” into the drawing.
Clearly it wasn’t.
With this drawing I put in all the work that was necessary into getting as dark blue as I could get.
Pressure
Just like with the last drawing I started out with drawing the stars. After that I painted the paper with hair styling wax. Than I colored the whole sheet blue. All over the stars.
I used quite a lot of pressure on the blue pencil and drew three layers. I used three hues of blue to get the best and darkest result possible.
The yellow and orange stars where just visible through the blue pencil and I used a tee spoon to scrape the blue off. As usually I finished my drawing with a hair spray to fixate it.
Stars
Conclussion
What have I learned from my experiments?
- It’s quite easy to draw fireworks and stars against a dark sky.
- It’s possible to draw on top of colors that are fixated with hair spray .
- Although it is possible to blend colors using the brush I used to paint wax on the sheet of paper, the whole sheet gets the same color. A flowing color like I got in Mask doesn’t seem to be possible.
- When mixing pencil with hair styling wax you should be very careful where you put your hands otherwise everything will get blue
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Let’s clear the stage for a fellow autist. Gilles Trehin draws pictures of the imaginary town of Urville.
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday July 27, 2007
Series
This is the third part of a series about drawing dark colors around light colors. The series consists of:
Just grease
While I was doing yesterdays drawing I thought that it should be possible to get almost the same result without the liquid masking film.
Fireworks quick and dirty
This is the same drawing as yesterday with hair wax and and a few layers of blue color on top. Since it’s very sticky I’m using a sheet of plastic to protect my scanner.
Fireworks quick and dirty
After coloring the paper blue I used a tee spoon to scrape the blue color from the fireworks and houses.
The fireworks look quite nice but the night sky is to light.
To get rid of the wax I fixated the drawing using hair spray.
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Drazen Kozjan draws simple looking illustrations
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday July 25, 2007
Series
This is the second part of a series of experiments to find an easy technique of drawing a dark color around light colored detail. The series consists of:
Liquid masking film
Artist who paint with acrylic paint also run into problems with painting lighter colors on top of darker colors. They solve this problem by using something called liquid masking film. A fluid that resembles white paint but when it sets you get something with a rubber feel that you can very easily remove by scratching it away.
When painting you yently paint over the film and remove it when you’re finished. When drawing you scratch pigment on the paper and could very easily remove the film before you’re done.
Draw darker with wax
Since it is so easy to accidently remove the film from the paper makes it all but useless for drawing.
To use the liquid masking film you should have some trick to get more pigment on the paper without having to press very hard.
After some drawings you find that you inadvertent left some fingers on the paper that turned into nasty colored stains. That’s because you fingers leave a fatty residue that picks up much more pigment then paper.
In this instance we can use that to our advantage.
To get more pigment on the paper without pressing I used the kind of wax women put in there hair. (It’s quite possible that butter would work just as well but it will get smelly after a few weeks).
Fireworks easy and dirty
Here I’ve drawn the fireworks. Put the liquid masking film on and painted wax on top. The film and the wax are colorless so you can’t see them. (I used a sheet of plastic to protect my scanner.)
Getting the liquid masking film on the paper was a bit of a problem. At first I tried painting it with a brush but that ruined the brush. I got some advice at my local art shop. Turns out you have to use a (pointed) blender.
(Pointed) blender
A (pointed) blender looks a bit like a bruch and has about the same size as a large brush. But where the hairs would usually go you find a rubber point.
Fireworks easy and dirty
Here I’ve used one layer of blue. To get the best result you should use two layers of blue. preferably two hues. more then one color works best when using a crosshatching technique (drawing horizontal and then vertical).
You can use the paint brush and little bit more wax to blend the color.
Fireworks easy and dirty
I used a knife to remove the masking film.
Finishing up
At this point the drawing is very greasy and it won’t dry.
To prevent my drawings from staining I always fixate them with a little hair spray. This time I needed more then a little. But the drawing isn’t fatty anymore.
Faulty
At first glance this seems like a good technique to color around details. But if you look more closely you see that there is a lot of white around the details. The problem is that it isn’t possible to paint small details with liquid masking film. Using a brush to paint with it, you hardly get any liquid on the paper an using the blender you get to much. It shapes like a droplet and flows over the edges.
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Noli Novak must be one of the most patient people alive. She draws portraits a dot at the time.
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