It was very clear to me that part 3 of the course was quite weak and needed follow-up studies. Therefore I repeated several exercises, included earlier in the blog. Then I decided it was time to give it another try for the assignment piece, the view from a window. I had selected the view from my office over the Hudson river, with the Brooklyn skyline in the background.
I briefly considered working on a different view, but then found it more beneficial for my learning to take up what I had made as preparatory work and focus on improving the assignment drawing.
Looking again at the first assignment drawing and my preparatory studies, I identified as major weaknesses
- not enough colour intensity and tonal contrast
- not enough definition in the midground
- inappropriately thin paper for the wash technique, resulting in buckles
- not enough solidity and weight of the building to the left
- the open right side of the sheet
All in all, the time distance of a few months plus the gain in experience from having completed the drawing course helped me to see how I might improve this drawing.
I wanted to stay with coloured pencils and wash because I knew this would give me intense colours. I also found the preparatory black line drawing in the sketchbook quite successful. I decided to use pen & ink with coloured Inktense pencils for the new version of the drawing, and I selected heavy watercolour paper which would not buckle when I applied water. This time I worked from a photo at home, not on the spot in the office. The drawing took about 6 hours to make, distributed over 3 days of drawing.
The ink linework was built on a detailed pencil underdrawing, which helped to get perspective lines approximately right. I also took care to extend the drawing over the entire page. The colours were added next, then reworked with a wash. A difficult aspect was the unpredictability of the colour when washed from the dry pencil work. I don’t know if this is special to Inktense pencils but I never seemed to get the colour effect I expected. I reworked the wash and the result came closer to what I intended.
What I like about this drawing is the effect of distance I achieved by including the window frame very close and large, and then drawing the Brooklyn skyline very small and without detail at the distance. I also like the composition and how the eye seems to be hopping through the space I created. The reflections on the windows of the left building also work quite nicely.
I think there’s still room for improvements, for example in the colours, or being more exact in the midground of trees and what’s below them. But at this point I’m glad that for my taste, the second version of the assignment looks considerably better than the first drawing.