Drawings

Fun fact. Corona forced me to stop watching videos all day and do something that does not require me to stare at a screen mindlessly. It is also a coincidence that my father got me a graphics tablet for Christmas. I always liked drawing and doodling here and there, therefore the graphic tablet was greatly appreciated. With the graphic tablet, I started experimenting with different applications and drawing styles. This collection and other pictures on the blog is just the product of the experimenting. Nearly all the pictures on my blog are drawn using that graphic tablet. Unlike, the logos, which were designed using an online graphic design application and the photos, which are taken with my camera. Long story short, I have no idea about copyrights, therefore I create my own pictures since they would save me the struggle of getting the rights to the pictures I need and the pictures represent what I am imagining more than anyone else’s work. The quality of the pictures may not have been ideal but I am working on it.

This time instead of making a cover image for my article, I have decided to make something different. Just like photography, I really liked to capture the landscape, since being stuck at home and all that. Moreover, just like my photography, one has to thank my indecisiveness for the odd pictures out. Eight out of ten pictures have something in common. Although I am most proud of the odd ones out. I mean this sarcastically when I say that I now have a long three-time history of uploading images without a theme. If I keep this up, uploading pictures without a theme will become an unwanted tradition.

Full disclosure, I did not try this kind of drawing before. Normally, I would do something close to sketching and drawing but I never really thought about using the tool I have at my disposal to create or recreate landscapes and other things. How the pictures turned out was a pleasant surprise. I even tried to add shadows to create a feeling of depth but that did not go as planned therefore these drawings are just two-dimensional. Since I was not quite sure if the drawings are good, I had to ask a friend for a second opinion since after spending hours drawing these I was a bit lightheaded and my judgment was a bit clouded. After drawing for hours on end, I finally finished these and I still have no idea how to feel about them. Either way, I ordered the drawings chronologically, since it would be easier to explain my thought process.

This would be the first drawing I attempted and it surprised me how easy it was to draw this kind of image with the right tools. I attempted this drawing using trial and error since I had no idea where to start. After figuring it out and finding hidden application features, I managed to do the rest with more ease. I must admit I imagined something different completely.

First, as mentioned, I wanted to attempt something with shadows. However, my friend advised against it and now looking at it I believe it was the right decision since the shadows are uneven and do not look that good. Otherwise, the colour palette I chose for this project is all right. The beach umbrella was a last-minute addition since the beach looks empty without it. Honestly, I have no idea why the beach area is that big in the first place. For what it´s worth, I expected worse so this is not a disappointment. In all honesty, I also have no idea why I decided to draw a beach as my first drawing. This idea just came and I just put it down on paper (or in this case on the computer). On an unrelated note, I also believe that the drawing looks very unrealistic. When one flies a drone over the ocean one will never see this kind of image, which makes me wonder even more, why I drew this drawing in the first place.

This mountain forest landscape seems more realistic in comparison to the waves. At first, I wanted to add skyscrapers behind the trees and before the mountains but there is only so much space to explore my ideas, therefore I left out the buildings. This drawing just seems a bit too normal and bland for my taste. There is no special colour pallet or anything. I do not even know why but I am slightly disappointed in this drawing. However, I did learn a few things from this drawing. Instead of naming everything I learned, I want to explain how it came to the realizations in the first place. First, I drew the trees. Honestly, it is just triangles, nothing special. I started with the trees in the back, in other words, the trees with the darkest shade of green. With each layer above the first, the shade of green got lighter. It is not rocket science. Then I moved onto the mountains. Now looking back, I realize that I should have started with the mountains instead of starting with trees. It is a lesson learned I guess. I just used the mountains as space fillers; therefore, I started with the lightest shade of grey and moved backwards unlike what I did with the trees. My first realization was that putting different shaded shapes on different layers makes it easier to keep an overview. My second realization was that planning does not really help. I did have a plan but that did not work out therefore for this I just see what works and implement it. The third realization is that working from front to back or vice versa does not quite make a difference since each has their hassles and each have their advantages.

For the next drawing, I just used the previous drawing and removed the clouds and mountains, since I just believe that the trees look pretty good. I also changed the colour pallet and used different shades of green, so that the previous drawing and this drawing does not look that identical. For the background, I just used a gradient.

Somehow, I just really liked the idea of mountains. Therefore, I just took that idea and ran with it. Just like the second drawing, I started with the mountain in the foreground and worked my way backwards. It was just frustrating to remember to add a layer behind the current one I am working on since I constantly forget I am working backwards. For this drawing, I chose a purple orange colour pallet. I have no idea why I chose purple specifically since purple is not the colour of a natural mountain. The sun was also unplanned but the drawing looks empty without it. The mountain in the foreground is the darkest, unlike the second drawing. This decision is because the sun is in the background and reaches the mountains in the foreground last and therefore the first mountain is the darkest. It is funny to me how something unintentional was necessary to explain the drawing.

This is the odd picture out and honestly, I am most fond of it. I wanted to do a silhouette and the balloons were just a lovely addition. At first, I wanted to use a different colour pallet and a completely different background but after tons of consideration, the girl with the balloon just looks best in front of a setting sun and approaching night sky. After deciding on the background, the stars just came naturally since the background without the stars just looks empty. I am most fond of this picture because the shadows I wanted to try worked out perfectly with the balloons. At least it does not looks as bad as the shadow effect in the first picture. Just like the mountains, I started with the balloons in the foreground and move backwards. There are two balloons of the same colour but they are nowhere near one another. At first, I did not want two balloons of the same colour but the balloon colour just looked too similar and was confusing. Therefore, there are two balloons of the same colour. For the girl, I took a photograph of an actual woman and just outlined it. Full disclosure, I did not take that picture since I did not attempt fashion photography yet. After filling out the outline, the girl looked all right but I added a dark blue dress anyways. Maybe it was a compulsive decision but I am fond of this drawing none the less.

This is the second drawing not fitting into the landscape collection. (I know that one can argue that those are waves but I believe that it does not seem right to call this landscape.) For a specific reason, I desperately wanted to try this drawing. That reason is that the balloons worked out nicely in the previous drawing, therefore I decided to give shadows another shot. That decision paid off. After tons of experimenting with shadows, I found the best ways to create shadows is not with an airbrush, which I used in my previous attempts. Instead, I just had to duplicate the layer and use the paint bucket to fill the duplicated layer below the coloured area with the colour black. Then I had to decrease the opacity of the black layer since shadows do not have a solid colour. Afterwards, I moved that lower black layer up a bit to create a shadowy effect. To make it look realistic, I also had to blur the edges of the black area since shadows do not have straight lines. I am still not sure if this is the ideal way to create shadow but it is my way of creating shadows and that was good enough for me. Since I love the colour turquoise, I chose a turquoise blue colour pallet.

For the next few drawing, I was running low on inspiration; therefore, I just took some landscape photos from other photographers and tried to recreate their work using one colour pallet. Fun side note, for copyright reasons, I cannot show them but if you are really interested you could check out the links. After doing some research I not only found out I can´t show the picture but I also found out that the drawing is supposed to represent mount fitz roy. Back to how I created the drawings. As mentioned above I used one colour pallet to create the drawing, which seems a bit boring but it was not as boring as I believed it to be. To create the colour pallet, I just took a colour from the original photo and made it lighter and darker to create a colour pallet. The differences between the original and the recreation are quite significant since I did take some artistic liberties any played with it. For example, most of the mountains in my drawing are not there in the original photo. In my opinion, the drawing shows some similarities to the original but it is not a one on one recreation. The reason for that is that the photo has different colours and texture to fill the empty space but I only have one colour.

Quick remark before I get started: I am actually free to use this picture, just like how people can use my images on Pixbay. Nevertheless, I just wanted to credit the photographer real quick, since that image is stunning and I just hope my amateur recreation does it justice. The photo below is by a photographer named Simon Berger and his photos are available on Pexels.

For this picture, I took some artistic liberties and tried to recreate the image below. For example with the sun. Now thinking about it, I should have used a gradient filler just like in the third and fifth picture since the sun just seems like overdoing it and there is no sun in the original photo. Since I am already writing about the artistic liberties I have taken, I might as well mention that I cropped the picture. The original had some blue streaks in the sky but I could not incorporate them into the drawing properly, therefore I left it out. That decision makes me feel bad since the original picture looks amazing and without the blue, it just seems as if something is missing. With this picture, I did not even use a colour pallet like in the other drawings, which was a fun thing to try out after using the same methods over and over again. I just took the eyedropper tool. However, I do believe that the eyedropper tool is just capturing one colour and not the mixture of colours in that area.

Like the image above, I am free to use the image but I want to credit the photographer anyways. This image is captured by a photographer named Faaike and his photos are available on Pixbay.

I am not sure why I have this weird obsession with the sun but I just love to add a sun in the background even though it is not necessary. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that a single colour cannot fill an empty area. I could have used a gradient filler and I just can´t believe I am only thinking about it now. Either way, for this drawing I used a colour pallet I found online. I just really liked that colour pallet and used it. For obvious reasons I also left out the tiny details in the image otherwise the colour pallet would need more colours.

This photo I used is taken by a photographer named Sasin Tipchai and his photos are also available on Pixbay.

This will be the last of the drawings in this ten drawing collection. For one last time, I did take some artistic liberties but I already explained why. For the colour pallet, I took a random colour from the photo background and created a colour pallet using it. The rest is just tracing outlines and filling the space. Sidenote: For unspecific reasons, when I look at Asian tea plantations and rice plantations, I just feel calm; therefore drawing this drawing was quite meditative. Drawing the other landscapes were also somewhat meditative but not as meditative as this one.

After ten drawings and writing about them, I am honestly exhausted therefore, I am slightly glad that this article is coming to an end. From drawing, I learned a few tricks to speed up the drawing process and not decrease the drawing quality. There is a part of me that is furious that I did not know those tricks before but I am glad I learned them anyway. 

All my pictures are available for download. Just follow the link below:

https://pixabay.com/users/aureliajh-18994837/

More pictures will come soon.