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 Sunday October 7, 2007
After a lot of work I’ve drawn clouds that look almost the way I want them to do.
The last clouds sketch I also tried hatching and cross hatching with shorter strokes then I usually use. Usually I use strokes of three to five centimeters. This time I used strokes of only one centimeter.
Clouds 8
The resulting colors are much nicer then in my last sketch. The shapes could be real clouds. Not sure whether I’ve seen all these colors in real clouds though.
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by Henk ter Heide on Sunday October 7, 2007
Returning to my study to mix the colors needed to draw clouds.
It’s been a little over a month but I finaly have the feeling that I should be able to mix some colors to do the drawing I wanted to do.
Clouds 7
The colors in this sketch aren’t very good. To make matters worse I don’t like the way you can see the pencil scratches.
I did find out that there is a little difference depending on whether you blend with a tortillon or with a white pencil. White pencil seems to pull the blue’s out while tortillon pulls the reds out.
I don’t know why that is or if it has anything to do with the drawing method.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday August 22, 2007
Painting with toilet paper
A few months ago I made a beautiful drawing in which I used a blending technique that seemed almost like painting.
Usually you draw some color on your sheet and rub it either with a tortillon or a piece of toilet paper. This time however I drew the color on a seperate piece of paper and pulled onto my drawing.
Gray on gray
In an attempt to get the shapes I see in the clouds above my head I wanted to try this technique. But a few minutes after starting with the clouds I realized that it wouldn’t work.
With Nova I used a bright yellow color as foreground and the white of the paper as background. But here I wanted to use gray both as foreground and background. You just wouldn’t see it.
Argh! Those clouds are turning out to be a whole of a lot more difficult to draw then I thought.
Clouds 5th sketch
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Ian Francis does very expressive paintings of people.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday August 20, 2007
Heavy weather is drawing near. Luckily it isn’t happening in real live but in my drawings.
Over the coming week I will be showing you a few sketches of clouds. Hopefully they’ll get better.
Clouds 4th sketch
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Robh’s paintings and drawings of landscapes are as beautiful is his indoor scenes.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday August 15, 2007
Lingo
In the Netherlands we have a game show on television called “Lingo”. In that show people have to guess a six letter word in six turns. After every turn they are told how many letters of the word they guessed where good and how many letters were in the right place.
I look at this game show every so often and I find it a very difficult game. Guessing a six letter word knowing that the second letter is an “l” and the last a “s” is not something I’m very good at.
Lingo experts
Once or twice a year they have a contender who’s very good in this game. What I’ve noticed is that those people don’t take the known letters in account when guessing the next word. They come with two or three wild guesses and then with there fourth or fifth guess they know the word.
They suggest words that have a lot of different letters. So after three or four guesses they know all the letters. A six letter word containing these letter (o, l, c, d, u, s) is much easier to guess. Especially when you know that the second and last letter are in the right place.
Looking for help
One of the hurdles I had to take when I started drawing was the realization that drawing and pictures aren’t supposed to look the same. The subject matter can be the same but a drawing will never look exactly like a photograph.
When I try to draw clouds I run into a very similar problem.
Having a photographic memory means that I have a whole range of clouds in my memory. But I can’t draw them because the pictures in my memory have a structure that can’t be drawn.
In the hopes that it would make the process easier I’ve been studying picture of famous paintings. So apart from pictures of real clouds I now also have pictures of painted clouds in my memory.
Sadly paint has very different properties then pencil. Using oil paint it’s possible to paint white on black or grey. With pencil that isn’t possible.
Imagine a drawing
I have to go back to basics. Which means that I’ve have to imagine what a drawing of clouds will look like. Just like I did with the trees when I first became aware of this problem.
Only thing is that clouds are a little more complicated then trees.
Clouds 2th sketch
Expert mode
I find myself playing Lingo with clouds.
I try to imagine what a drawn cloud would look like and get a vague picture which I draw. With the next drawing I imagine I get a little help from my last drawing so the next drawing could be marginally better.
This way I could go on forever without ever getting it right. So I’ve opted for the expert mode. I’m drawing pictures that don’t necessary look like clouds but that, hopefully, will help me to imagine drawings of clouds.
Clouds 3th sketch
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Andre Weis beautiful drawings are Deeper than words.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday August 13, 2007
Summer in the Netherlands
We are having a strange summer here in the Netherlands. Usually we have fairly cool tempatures with a lot of rain untill early Juni. Then a few nice hot days. Then it gets a bit cooler again and in late August early September we again have some hot days.
This year is very different. In May and June we had exceptionally warm days. Much hotter then the usual summer. After that everbody expected the summer to be very hot but it isn’t. We haven’t had this much rain in years.
Monsoon
The rain is also very much different then what we are used to.
If it rains in the summer we ussual will have rain over the whole of the Netherlands and in will last for a few days.
This year that isn’t the case. Instead we have very strong rain at a few square mile radius and a few kilometers futher its dry.
You can literally drive out of a shower.
drawing weather
The nice thing about these small showers is that it gives a very nice sky. A bit of cumulus in the foreground and thunder clouds in the background.
After having found that there is no technique that’s both easy and practical for the drawing of light colored details against a dark background I thought this was a nice change to do quit sketch of white clouds against a blue background.
Clouds 1th sketch
At least that was the plan. But when I tried I found that I didn’t know what clouds looked like.
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Wesley Burt has a few nice drawings of people
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