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
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 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
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 Thursday October 4, 2007
An other blue tree. This time an old tree without leafs. That way I have more room to play with the color of the bark and I don’t have to worry about how I should draw leafs.
I know. That is cheating. At some point I must find a solution.
Blue tree 4
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 3, 2007
Drawing a tree without the use of brown and green.
I’ve found that using only brown and green for a tree isn’t very interesting. It doesn’t feel very life like. When you mix a few colors in it becomes much nicer. Even if you use colors you wouldn’t see in a real tree.
For this drawing I wanted to try to mix brown for the bark and green for the leafs.
The funny thing is that you need blue to mix both brown and green.
The bark went allright. The first drawing has a little to much blue in the bark but after a few tries I get a nice color.
The only problem is that the tree doesn’t have very much bark. So there isn’t much room to play.
I’m not as happy about the leafs. It’s rather scratchy. I must find some other method to draw leafs.
When I was finishing the third tree I realized that I now know how to draw fire. In fact the third tree looks something of a burning match.
Blue tree 1
Blue tree 2
Blue tree 3
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.