We still have our Christmas Vacation, my husband and me both work in schools now. So we went for a walk in a forest area near Rucphen, where we had walked before. The walk was nice and being there in wintertime made it different from the previous time we made that specific signposted walk.
Lying close to the path were several dead branches, already stripped of their bark by - the animals, the weather, time or..
What I noticed were the colours of the bare wood that were showing. It had rained a bit the day before, so the moist conditions helped a lot but still, there were shades of yellow, some orange-red, greens and shades of brown. All that was inviting me to make reference pictures and make a (watercolour) pencil drawing showing as much of these rich colours as possible. Of course the reference pictures were not perfect, but I have used my memory as well.
Using the pencils, I have layered and mixed colours until the shade I remembered was on the paper, adding the small bits of bark on the branch, some holes and the very small mushrooms near the middle of the branch. The branch was lying amidst dead leaves and some grasses. The leaves are only suggested by colour variations in the background and the grasses are 'drawn' with my eraser, trying the effectiveness of that technique.
While making this work I have learned a lot so the 'study' idea worked as it should. The result is even better than I hoped for at some point in the process.
The information about the materials I have used, the size of this drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment