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color

Scraping, sliding and floating

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday August 13, 2009

Color pencils are made by mixing pigments with wax. How much pigment is used and how soft the wax is determents the quality of the pencil.

I have two color pencil sets. One set of 12 pencils are top of the range. With a soft wax and a lot of pigment they float about the paper. Although it’s a joy to use them I have made very many drawing with them.
Only the last few drawings I’ve done and my drawing Christening in which you can see how beautiful the colors are.

Then I have a set of 72 color pencil that are the runner up. They are good pencils but just not as good as my 12 pencil set.
The owner of my art supplies shop advised these when I started drawing two years ago. Mostly because of their price.
The runner up are € 52 for 72 pencils and the top of the range are € 138 for 72 pencils.
So the runner up are a good place to start. And I’ve enjoyed drawing with them for the last two years except for one thing.

Since they are of the same quality and presumably made in the same way you would expect that they all would have the same drawing properties. But they don’t.
Some slide fairly smoothly over the paper and others scrape over the paper in a way that make my toes curl.
I felt that most pencils scraped but I didn’t actually know how many and which pencils.

So in this drawing I examined that. The size of the surface of a color is decided by the feeling I have when I draw with it. The color the slide smoothly over the paper have a large surface. The colors that scrape a smaller surface.
And because I ran out of pencils before I ran out of paper I used a few pencils from my top of the range pencil set for the last part of the drawing.

I’ve found out a few things:

Firstly, contrary to my expectations, I have far more pencil in the runner up that slide fairly smoothly over the paper then pencils that scrape.
But the pencils that scrape are all very light colors. Which is a problem because I tend to use more light then dark colors.
And the way in which the pencils of the top range set float over the paper is truly delightful.

So the conclusion is clear. I should replace my color set with a box of top range pencils. But sadly I don’t have money to do that at this moment. So I’ve started out to replace those few pencils that really make my toes curl.

Scraping, sliding and floating

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Lines and leaf

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday June 21, 2009

This was a very hard drawing to design.
Going with the theory of important lines within a drawing to catch the attention of the audience. This was meant as a kind of minimalistic design. In a sense to see how empty a drawing can be and still be interesting.

The idea was for one leaf on the sidewalk. But to make it more interesting I wanted to change the size of the tiles. I spend a few days thinking about the best size for the tiles (and being busy with other things). But when I finally had time to make the drawing I couldn’t.
It felt as though something was wrong but I could put my finger on it.

After a boring day of playing computer games I realized that I had made a mistake in the design and had no problem drawing it.

Lines and leaf

Probably you’ll have seen what the problem is.
These kind of tiles they use on the sidewalk have a fixed size of about 25 * 25 centimeters. And everybody knows that.

As an artist I am allowed to change reality in any way I feel will make my drawing more interesting.
But the trick is not to be caught. Since everybody knows the size of sidewalk tiles the leaf will seem very large.

I have thought of an other design using both a sidewalk and leafs. But that’s for the next drawing.

Commenting this and my last drawing
Although it’s not really a problem with this drawing. Again I had a problem drawing the right side and the left side of the leaf symmetrical.
In this case it’s not really a problem because I shaded and it seems as though part of the leaf is lifted from the ground.

I realized that the problem is that I’m not very good in drawing curves that run from right to left. So I’m tempted to start with the curve running from left to right. Which usually is the right curve. (I turned the paper to draw the leaf). Then when I try to draw the left curve my hand covers the right curve and I can’t see what I’m doing.

Might be a good idea to start with the left curve and see how it goes.

The goal in doing EyeSee was to test the theory that putting interesting features on specific lines would trap the eye of the audience in a circular motion.
But although I did like the drawing I didn’t feel that my eyes were trapped.

It wasn’t until after I had posted the drawing that I realized that the problem was with the background.
As in. There is no background.

The point is not to draw attention to features on specific lines. The point is to help the audience find interesting features in the drawing by guiding there eyes.
For instance a row of trees in a landscape could guide the eye to a few interesting houses. Or interestingly colored clouds could guide the eye to a mountain range.

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EyeSee and thinking about my process

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday June 2, 2009

A few days ago I wrote that I had to get some things out of my system before I could really concentrate on drawing. I even started with an article about unemployment.
But now I’m feeling that isn’t it. Maybe it’s just that I don’t yet really know how my process works.

This morning I realized what the problem was with the drawing I was planning. It was not, as I was thinking, that the different parts of the drawing could present problems. It was the drawing it self.
I had printed a photo of some beautiful actress with blond hair that I was planning to copy.
The problem is that I don’t copy.

It’s like I’m making a kind of choice. Only it isn’t a choice.
The choice would be that I rather make a bad original drawing then a good copy. But that is not it.
It’s more like I can’t force myself to copy anything.
It doesn’t matter what good reasons there might be for making a copy (getting practice, feeling safe). I just can’t do it.

Maybe I should just accept that while I’m switching to this, relatively, new interest I’ll draw when I have something to draw. The rest of the time I will fill with thinking about it and searching for beautiful art to fill my web pages.

Anyway. About todays drawing.
I bought Jack Hamm’s book about drawing land and seascapes and found that it’s almost the opposite of his book on portrait and figure drawing.
Where the book on portraits starts with almost no theory and a lot of pictures of body parts to copy. The book on landscapes starts with 20 pages of theory on composition.
And what a theory. I’ve been drawing and reading about drawing and painting on and off for the last 30 years. But Hamm teaches me more about composition in the first 8 pages then I had learned up till now.

Since business is slow at my job at the moment I took the book to work and forgot to take it back home for the Whit weekend. So Saturday when I had a little time I couldn’t read the book but I could think about what I have read.

The theory is that you should not put your subject in the middle of your frame. Well you could if you wanted to. But you’d get an interesting picture if you don’t.

At first I started thinking about holiday snapshots.
Let’s say you want to photograph a family of five in front of a large old oak.
The most obvious choice would be to line the family up with the oak behind the person in the middle. And shoot them head to toe with the tree trunk showing above the head of the person in the middle.

But you’d get a much more interesting picture if you have the tree behind the second person in the line.
Shoot the people head to middle with a little more then a quarter of the frame showing either the sky or low hanging branches.

Or so it is written on page 5 of the book. Page 6 and 7 talks about catching the eye of the audience in a circler motion by putting interesting feature of the drawing on specific lines.

This drawing is an attempt at that.

EyeSee

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Could be Two face

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday May 5, 2009

Today I didn’t feel like making a ink drawing. Something more colorful seemed nicer.
Thinking about what I could draw I saw a jumble of multi colored face before my minds eyes. Most of them had yellow/red eyes so that seemed like a good place to start.
It’s a funny feeling seeing those two eyes on the paper staring ominously into to world and slowly forming an image as to what the rest of the picture could look like.

But as you can see I got stuck on the mouth and didn’t even start with the nose. Which is because I’m very bad with mouths and noses.
Doesn’t matter though, I have a book on the drawing of face.

Now you know what I will be doing for the next few days

img034

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Chair filled with odds and ends

by Henk ter Heide on Monday April 27, 2009

This was meant as part of a larger drawing. But as soon as I started I realized that the size of chair was too large to fit the rest. So I thought I finish it as a kind of study. To get a feel for what I was planning.
Since I have a tendency to loose myself in the details I thought I draw this more abstract. Drawing the colors without giving much attention to the shapes.
That went very well for a while. But then I made a mistake and got so distracted that I couldn’t continue the drawing.

That I get so distracted every time I make a little mistake means that I’ll have to try something I’ve been dreading ever since I started drawing.
I’ll have to try to make a single line ink drawing.
The funny/panicky thing about a single line ink drawing is that you are sure to fail. That is even if you succeed in drawing a reasonable picture of, what ever it is your drawing, you will always find a lot of mistakes. Which means it’s the single most frightening thing to do for somebody that is as focused on details as I am.

But on the other hand.
If I can get through this.
What could hurt me?

Chair filled with odds and ends

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Sliding bars

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 26, 2009

Sliding bars

Sliding bars
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Abstracting three trees

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday March 12, 2009

It’s strange how you can never see

something that’s staring you in your face. For the past two years I’ve been trying to draw photo realistic but I could never get it. But for the longest time it escaped me why that was. Only a few weeks ago it finally dawned on me.

I don’t have any pictures on my walls because they bore me. That seems to be one of the drawbacks of having a photographic memory. Within a few days a picture on the wall starts to feel like the rerun of the rerun of a show I didn’t want to see to begin with.
So why did I ever think that I could be interested in spending weeks creating an image of something I’ve seen in real life?

This drawing derived

from a picture I was planning to copy. This drawing was more fun to do then most of the drawing I’ve done so far. But I still didn’t feel satisfied.
While doing this drawing I realized that I’m actual not interested in shapes. I’m far more interested in playing with colors.

So for my next drawing I will be doing something that’s the opposite from this one.

Abstracting three trees

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Sketching and blending

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday December 28, 2008

This drawing is going to be a copy of this landscape painting by Francesco De Iure.

Just like with the last drawing I started out thinking I’d concentrate more on the colors then on the shapes.

1230a

But I found very quickly that wouldn’t work with this drawing. Clearly the relation between the tree in the foreground and the mountains in the background is very important.
So I started again this time starting with a sketch of the tree and it’s surrounding.
I used the lightest hue of gray I have in my color box. Even then I was a little scared it would show up in the scan. But luckily it didn’t. Although it does make for a rather strange picture.

Just like with the last drawing I came across the problem of having to use colors I don’t have in my drawing box. But this time I’ve found a better solution. Instead of just layering a few colors on top of each other I tried blending them. That worked out much better. The color I got looked much more like the original.

It feels a bit strange to start with the light background and then work my way to the foreground. Especially since I’m not really sure how I’m going to draw the tree.
This painting looks a lot like the Bob Ross painting you used to see some years ago. I’ve always been wondering how to imitate the cutting colors with a knife using a pencil.

1230b

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Sunset over America

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday December 23, 2008

It took me a while to figure out why I’ve never seen this picture in real life. The Netherlands lies below the level of the sea. For that reason every body of water is enclosed with dikes. Which means that if you look at the sun setting in a lake you’ll see a dike and a few tree tops in the distance. Never tops of houses as you see on the left site of this picture.

For my first attempt at copying a painting I chose Day 293, Morning sun, pastel, A4 by Rita Pogo.
About half way through the drawing I decide to concentrate more on the colors then on the shapes.
I can draw very good copy of objects. I done so in the past. The problem is that I loose myself in the detail and forget about the colors.
I figure that if I can get the colors right the shapes will take care of them self.

This drawing seems much lighter then the original. I’ve been thinking about making it darker, but I didn’t.
For one thing because I’m not completely sure about how to make it darking without changing the colors. And also because I think this should be a light colored picture.A sunset usually has a lot of bright colors.

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Using a background color

by Henk ter Heide on Friday December 19, 2008

It seems so obvious now that I’ve solved it but ever since I started drawing I’ve been wondering how to get rid of the white. Doesn’t matter how many details you draw there will always be a part of the picture without details and that part will be white.
The painting I’m copying has no white in it. But what do I draw after I’ve drawn the sun, the clouds and the water?
This afternoon it finally hit me.
I should start out with a background color. Either the lightest color there is in the picture or a part of the picture. In this drawing I’m doing that with the sea (lower part of the drawing, isn’t jet there). Or I use a color that I can mix to get the colors I need.
In the upper part of the drawing I use the lightest pink I have in my drawing box. That color isn’t actually in the picture but I can mix it to get the dark purple parts of the sky and the dark gray/blue clouds.

Using a background color has one other purpose. Pencil colors are usually far more interesting when you get them by mixing a few colors then by just using the colors in the box.

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