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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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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