Castle ‘De Wittenburg’ – 14-03-23

Still Gloomy

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Castle ‘De Wittenburg’ – 14-03-23’ is a sound cry for Spring. Dates put in former drawings indicate I sometimes started to draw outside in early March already. For the next coming week there will be nothing but rain under gray skies unfortunately. Winter will keep its claws in us for a longer time, I’m afraid. Unfortunately I will be attending the grand Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum accompanied by lousy weather next Sunday. However, the light already has changed dramatically, here in The Netherlands. Outside it stays light longer and it’s not so blueish anymore, compared to the month of November. Therefor I have decided to do a landscape now in a desperate attempt to enforce good outdoors sketching conditions.

A Quick Sketch

Of course, there are other reasons to do landscapes and cityscapes. Suddenly I realized it was quite some time ago I did my last one back in August. The one before that in small A5 size outdoors was made in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel in July last year. Surely those Faber Castell Pitt Graphite Matt pencils are the boss. I missed sketching with my old 0.5 mm mechanical pen though. See what I could get doing a quick sketch under one or two hours. That’s a welcome change from the large Psyche & Amor painting I have been working on for months now. That moloch is almost finished but sucks up a lot of artistic enery. Much to the detriment of my creative ambitions that want to drive me further.

De Wittenburg

Speaking of gloom still being winter I found the perfect reference picture. It’s Castle De Wittenburg in Wassenaar, Netherlands. There it lies in the middle of the so-called ‘estates route’ in a forest near to my home. Often have I dwelled there in its surroundings, looking for artistic motifs. I also happen to know the castle itself from a friend’s wedding and legal seminars back in the 90s. Always on my to do list and now was the time. I simply just love doing castles, old houses, chuches amidst treelines.

Hatching

With regard to the actual execution of this little drawing it’s all about practising my hatching techniques. Maybe just to see if I could pull it off on sight rather than by precise proportional measuring. I didn’t need to do a lot of correctional erasings. Therefor I merely focused on hachting up the extreme dark parts and erasing back the high lights. That always works. I hope these gloomy depictions, how dramatically beautiful they are, soon will be followed up by lighter ones.

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