High water near Deventer - a pencil drawing

 

We were on a short mini vacation (two nights in a hotel) in the beautiful old town of Deventer and as it is the end of winter, the water in the river IJssel was high. Some quays were flooded and on the other river bank a lot of land was flooded as well. These areas of land are designed to flood when the water is high so the towns and villages are protected.

We did go for a walk in the town, looking at wonderful old buildings and churches, but the narrow streets are not a great spot to make reference pictures. I wanted to paint or draw the skyline from the other side of the river so we went to make some reference pictures in the afternoon and I started drawing almost as soon as we got back in the hotel. On these very short trips I only bring my drawing materials, these are easy to work with and I can stop and start again when that is most convenient.

For this skyline drawing I decided to use graphite pencils for the buildings and my watercolour pencils for the nature that is in the scene. So the water, the trees in the town and in the foreground, the reeds and the strip of grassland that was not flooded are all in colour. 

The water reflected a very clear blue sky, but I have not made the sky blue in this drawing. The difference in the shades of blue are caused by the strong current of the river. The foreground is flooded grassland and there is not much current there. Many of the trees are standing in the water now, but that is not unusual in winter time, so they are expected to survive this. In fact the smallest branches were already changing colour to show that they are getting in springtime mood.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.