Not every weekly challenge in the 'Project Rembrandt Thuisopdracht' program is suitable for me. Sometimes it is about the paint that has to be used, sometimes the subject does not inspire me. This time I am inspired and I set out as soon as possible to make a reference picture of a skyline and make a tonal drawing.
As Rembrandt himself was a master in dark-and-light, we are also challenged to make a dark-and-light drawing of a skyline (or city view, village view, even a farm view if nothing else is near) near the place we live using pencils, charcoal or Indian Ink. My choice is charcoal.
The skyline of my own home village is not so exiting, mostly trees and low buildings, so I went to the river to make reference pictures of Dordrecht in the morning sun. Later that day it would turn grey and rainy, a good time to be indoors and make my charcoal drawing.
To find a spot with some depth was not so easy, most of the view of Dordrecht is from the other side of the river and that results in a very straight line, except where the small harbours are situated. For this contest I selected the more modern part of the skyline of Dordrecht, as the Great Church has been painted by better painters than I am.
Keeping my paper white was a challenge and I cheated a bit with an eraser at some points, but I managed to get very light, very dark and several middle tones. The sky was blue, but darker than some parts of the concrete buildings and the river was in the shadows, so it was darker than the sky and several of the buildings. The darkest buildings have outer walls made of bricks (the inner walls are concrete in our country and between these two walls is a thin layer of insulation).
This drawing may not be what I intended to make, but I really am happy with it. It's 'a real Janneke' and I just have to keep in mind that this is how I draw landscapes.
The information about the materials I have used, the size of this drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.
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