This one i did yesterday but i had to wait for today to have decent sunlight for taking a picture of the drawing.
We’re still at Can Lis – this is one of the window openings from the living room, opening up to a view of the sea and the sky.
Can Lis is all about light, and each minute of the day, the sunlight and the clouds visibly change the appearance of the house. I wish i could be there with the rest of my class! My drawing is almost depressive next to the photo and even though i thought i used some pretty soft pencils, the contrasts aren’t big enough between light and shadow. I’m also missing the warmth of the photo. The mediterranean sun on roughly cut sandstone is just wonderful – maybe this motif would work better with some aquarel.
Every individual stone is unique, and although i draw on the fore-mentioned small format, it wouldn’t work to draw each stone alike for the sake of abstraction. Then the question remains as to what i should aim for en representing the different textures. I have tried to be reasonably truthful in representing the uniqueness of each stone, but man, it’s hard.
I’ll draw you another one today.
I don’t know if you want any tips but I have one for you, I find that shading with pencil gets pretty tedious pretty quickly, but if you can get hold of some conte crayons, or black pastel, they are a bit harder than charcoal and can make darker lines. One of them plus a sponge and a rubber can make nice contrasts and shading, and if you can get an electric rubber (even thought it sounds ludicrous) you can do really fine detailed highlights. A brown might help to get that warmth
Thanks for your tip, it is much appreciated!
Whereas i’d like to at some point master shading with pencils, it’s true that it can be hard to get it “dark” enough. I’ll check out what conte crayons and black pastels are all about – maybe i could mix it in with the pencils.
Actually as for the sponge, i suppose you’re talking about “smudging” it to get the lines to smooth a bit together in a gradient-like effect? In fact i don’t even use my fingers for doing this, which might be the first step. The reason is that i once had a drawing teacher who was “religiously” against smudging the lines for this effect.. She thought it took out the personality of the artists individual “line”.. I suppose that i listened rather uncriticly to this advice.. I’ll try out smudging a bit.. Maybe even with a sponge.
Thanks again for the advice!