Den Haag – Lange Voorhout – 15-05-23

A Beautiful Spot

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Den Haag – Lange Voorhout – 15-05-23’ depicts a beautiful spot in the heart of the city. Originally it formed the offshoot of the Haagse Bos into the centre. I came across it on the same day as I took a picture for ‘Marlot – 11-04-23’. Spring was in the air and I even opened up my jacket on my bike. That season can be a drag here in The Netherlands often. It’s almost as cold as in winter. Even today, when I finally finished this one, it still was a chilly 13 Celsius. So no live drawing unfortunately for me yet. Perhaps I’m that lazy artist, not willing to freeze my behiny off. I’m committed enough to draw though. Long live photography, especially the iPhone. It takes beautiful pictures. As long as I’ve seen the spot in real life I will be able to use them indoors.

Not Cubistic Again

My last drawing of Gent inspired me to do another cityscape. For some reason I was intrigued by sketching people in crowds. The cubist interpretation worked quite nicely. Not to mention the way cubism wasn’t getting in the way of interpreting flocks of people in the distance. However, this drawing is constructed slightly different. Somehow I felt it needed a different approach. That’s all due to the bubbles, being the main theme. In a way I felt reluctant to go cubistic again. Maybe I feared these frail structures would be hard to recognize once rendered in straight lines. Then I remembered a previous drawing ‘Estate Oosterbeek – 31-03-21 (sold)’. Treetops not yet in leaf can almost look like light-gray toned spheres. So my decided to employ my old style ‘roundism’ once again.

Roundistic Trees

These inner city sceneries quickly can become overwhelming, showing too many details. As an artist I always feel I have to abstract. The scenery consists of tree branches, lamposts, window rebates, facades of buildings and people in front of them. They easily can appear as a rubble pile. On the other hand I wanted a kind of recognition of the place. I think I might have get that wanted outbalanced result. Personally, I think my roundistic trees look better than sketched more realistically. The roundish shapes set off against the facades nicely and it makes the bubbles pop out even more. I only loosely indicated facial features. They were not needed anyway, the light and cast shadows on and round the figures do the trick. Hard to draw faces that small on A5-size paper using a 0.5 mm pencil anway.

Graphite pencil drawing (Sakura 0.5 mm, 4B) on Winsor & Newton Bristol board paper (21 x 14.8 x 0.1 cm – A5 format)

Artist: Corné Akkers