Reed lands

 

Another challenge was announced a few days ago: Artists and Illustrators Magazine has started a 'Lockdown Drawing Challenge' again, with a new theme every week. This first challenge has 'lockdown walks' as its theme and I made some reference pictures during a walk close to my home, in the park 'Noordhoekse Wiel'. In this time of the year, the most prominent feature of that area are the reed lands, with reeds that are higher than I am and some bare trees and bushes standing between them.

For my 'lockdown drawing' I made a watercolour underpainting with the colours of the sky and the shapes of the distant trees and an indication of the shadows in the foreground.

After that had dried, I used my pencils to draw the tree and bushes between the reeds and the reeds themselves. In the foreground are reeds that were broken and lying on the ground, I have used a lot of different colours for the stalks of the reeds to indicate a wide row of reed plants. Of course I added more shadow colours until I had so many layers of pencil that I could hardly add another colour.

After I had made my reed land as dense as I could achieve, I started adding the plumes and the last details to the tree branches and to finish it all I used some fixative.

The information about all the materials I have used, the size and availability of this work are all in my Tumblr blog