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
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday December 14, 2008
This is the first time I try to copy a painting and I must say that it’s very scary. Not in the least bit because I have absolutely no idea how I should go about this.
The parts of the sky I’ve drawn should become the darkest part of the sky. But I’ve drawn them I the color of the lighter parts. I’ve no idea whether that’s a problem or something that will sort it self out when I get to it.
The reason that I’m using the color of the lighter parts to draw the darker parts is because the color that is used for the darker parts isn’t in my drawing box. I’ll have to mix some colors. Hopefully I’ll be left with the lighter parts.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday October 24, 2007
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
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.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Thursday October 18, 2007
Mixing brown the other way round.
In mixing some colors there is a difference which color is on top and which color is below. At least that was the case with the pencil box that I used when I started drawing at the beginning of this year.
I’m not completely sure whether it’s also true for this pencil box.
Any way. I was thinking about the drawing I want to do next. With a tree in the foreground and clouds in the background.
I thought that it would be nice if you could see the branches.
I was thinking about what the best way is to draw something like this.
The last few trees I started out with blue for the trunk and blue for the leafs. But if I would add blue clouds it would get very complicated. Almost impossible to see where the tree ended and the clouds began.
It would be much easier if I started with the trunk and branches in orange. The draw the clouds and then draw the outline of the leafs with yellow. (Which will turn green if I do it in this order.)
The only problem with that idea is that I’m not sure what color I will get if I mix orange, blue and yellow in that order.
Tree 11
This drawing also solves an other problem I’ve been having. How to draw a tree in a way that the sky is still visible. Turns out to be very easy. Just follow the branches.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday October 17, 2007
Suffering from a little self pitty and talking about the goal of the study.
Shouldn’t drawing get easier with time? After nearly ten months I would have expected to have lost the fear of failure.
The last few days were much easier then usual so I thought I was finaly over it. But no.
Today I feel as anxious as always. And for what.
The drawing isn’t that hard.
Most times I have some kind of plan before I put the pencil to paper.
Today I want to know what happens if I take purple and blue as primary colors and yellow as secondary color. Purple for everything that has to do with the bark and blue for everything leaf like.
I also want to know what will happen if I change the drawing direction.
Tree 10
Changing the drawing direction changes the feeling I get from the drawing. Vertical line give me a feeling of strenght. The lines in this tree where not really horizontal but perpendicular on the lines in yesterdays tree.
This tree feels as thought it’s much fatter then yesterdays tree, although it’s about the same size.
Coloring yellow on top of the blue and the purple and in one stroke seeing the purple turn into brown and the blue into green was funny. A bit magical.
The problem with the (not really) horizontal lines was that the blue spills over the edge. It’s a little tricky to cover the blue with the yellow. So I get edges that are either blue or yellow but not green.
There is of course a simple sulotion to this problem and that is to draw in a background.
The question is? What will work better?
First drawing the tree and then filling in a blue background. Or coloring half the sheet blue and then sculping out the tree with yellow.
Or some combination.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday October 16, 2007
Connecting the trunk to the leafs.
Looking at my tree drawings you might have the feeling that they consist of two separate parts: The trunk and the leafs.
You would be right.
I used to start with a trunk. Then stop to think how I would draw the rest of the tree.
The last few days I started with the top of the tree and then planted a trunk underneath.
But every tree drawing starts out with a lot of blue. I get a brown trunk by mixing blue with orange and green leafs by mixing blue with yellow.
So why couldn’t I draw the whole tree in blue and then mix in the orange and the yellow.
I tried. In combination with the drawing with the side of the pencil this makes for a very strong tree.
(If I may say so myself 
)
Tree 9
With a little more experimenting I found that if I mix purple with yellow I get almost the same color brown as when I mix blue with orange.
That should mean that I could mix branches into the leafs.
Something to try tomorow.
Which goes to show that I had nothing to worry about.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
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.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
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.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Saturday October 13, 2007
Mixing sea colors
Sometimes I think I should just stick with abstract drawings seeing that most of my drawings look abstract.
But as much as I like abstract drawings, I like nature drawings even more. Abstraction is only a state were my drawings go through.
Blending several layers of blue and yellow I mixed a lively color green only to find that it’s the wrong color.
At first I thought that it should be darker, which it should. After thinking about it for some more I realized that I’m missing a shade.
This is supposed to be a wave. The top halve of the wave is curling forward and should cast a shade.
Sea 4
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.