by Henk ter Heide on Thursday October 11, 2007
Starting a drawing with a sketch.
I was actually thinking of doing this sea sketch in red. It’s much easier to start at something knowing that you’ll probably fail if you set out to fail.
But on second thought the point is doing it as good as I can and taking the risk of failing.
Any way. Last night in the shower I thought of something that is very obvious but for some reason I hadn’t thought about it: I could make a sketch in the colors I’m going to use.
The special part of that is that you usually do a sketch in graphite pencil and then color it in. Often you’ll only decide which colors you’ll use after you’ve made the sketch. The problem with this approach is that the black graphite is always visible and I don’t like that.
With this drawing I have to color round a white open space where the foam is supposed to be. So starting with a sketch isn’t a bad idea.
The difficult bit for me is that this reminds me of the tracing of photographic memories that I haven’t been able to do until now. What I did this time wasn’t really tracing but I’m getting there.
Sea 3
Looking around the internet for guidance I came across a drawing that is much better then anything I can make right now. But it does give me the feeling that I’m on the right track.
Shower of stars3
This drawing is by Shere Chamness
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday August 29, 2007
The main objective with the drawing was to try whether it is actually possible to draw something with mixed colors.
Could it be
The sky is build up out off different hues of grey and blue. Every tree is a different combination of green with a blue’s and red’s. Even the grass is a combination of greens and browns.
The drawing is horrible but it does work!
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I don’t think I will every be in the list of 65 worlds greatest paintings.
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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 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 Wednesday June 20, 2007
I’ve read somewhere that if you would see a tennis player in the buff you would see that the muscles in his right shoulder are much better developed then the muscles in his left shoulder (assuming he’s right handed). I don’t know about tennis player but it might be true for people who draw.
As I predicted a while back I’m getting better in the technique of blending colors and it’s taking less time but it’s still a lot of work.
Star field 2th sketch
After doing one of these drawing my shoulder is hurting a little. Half way through the second I had to go and do something else because my whole arm hurt.
Mm. After doing the drawing I find it isn’t quit what I had in mind. Maybe I’ll try something new in a while as part of something else. A star field on it self is a lot of work with a boring result.
BTW if you try to color a large surface, like I do in this drawing, you’ll often find that some pencil strokes are much darker then others. To prevent this you should turn the pencil around it’s axel while you’re drawing. That’ll give you more control on the thickness of the line. Then again maybe you want a very light color in that case you should make your strokes longer. Strokes of fifteen to twenty centimeter work nicely.
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by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday June 19, 2007
I don’t know if you saw it but there is a little mistake in Nova. In the left lower corner. While I was drawing it the piece of toilet paper slipped and the surgical glove I wear to prevent dirty fingers from spoiling my drawing pulled a little bit of pigment on to the sheet.
At ones I thought “ah, this could be interesting”. There are a lot of possibilities if you can get this kind of colored sparks on your sheet.
Star field 1th sketch
I went out and bought a few things made of rubber to try it.
I thought it would be nice to draw a night sky with sparkling colored bits. But it didn’t work. After spending a lot of effort to make the sheet of paper blue I felt it would be a waist not to use it.
On second thought maybe I should have. While I writing this I just thought of an other way to get the sparkling field of stars I wanted. So now I’ll have to color an other sheet of paper. Oh well, the joys of drawing… 
BTW While paging through my stats log I came across a link from someone who, apparently, linked to me a while back. Curious I went for a look and found a Canadian artist who makes really beautiful drawings and paintings. You should have a look.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.