Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
Having drawn 1 or 2 disappointing night sketches in Auckland over the years I wasn’t expecting much of this sketch of Our Lady of Dolors, the largest church structure in Asia*.
To make the sketch read correctly I decided I needed to capture the basilica in context. It's an impressive structure to record but without placing it into a bustling Indian street scene is a bit 1 dimensional – it could almost be anywhere. I was standing in a continuous stream of cars, motorbikes and people steadily passing by... horns were beeping, it was hot, people were brushing past me constantly and neon lights were glowing, so adding suggestions of these was necessary to add the context that helped to tell a story about the look and feeling of the place.
Back to my expectations around night sketching. As I expected I was feeling suitably unimpressed with my effort on the night. I was happy with how elements like telephone wires, neon lights and buildings framed the basilica and even helped lead the eye up the street toward the cathedral entrance. But something else was missing...
Contrast!
It was night time, but my sky was nowhere dark enough to convey a believable nocturne. I just couldn't see that on the night and it took a few days to realise. Going in again to deepen the night sky values made all the difference.
It was night time, but my sky was nowhere dark enough to convey a believable nocturne. I just couldn't see that on the night and it took a few days to realise. Going in again to deepen the night sky values made all the difference.
Following that all the pic needed was a couple more pops of colour to pick out the light glowing from the basilica entrance and bell towers and don’t forget that glowing red cross on top of the 45 metre tall central tower and i felt much happier with the result.
*So large in fact that my compositional skills have completely left the right hand bell tower of the picture!
Comments