The Common Pencil

Did I plan for this painting to become a two-part video project? No. But I bumped into so many ‘unknowns’ for this painting that I simply had to take the time to learn a few things.

How it began: I wanted to paint an awesome looking castle that could fit in a fantasy world. The look and feel of the castle were still unknown to me, so I went to Google for ideas. It became clear to me that I really liked the shape of the Lichtenstein castle from Germany, so I chose that one as my reference. I found two royalty free pictures of the castle from different angles and started sketching.

Sometimes I wonder where ideas really come from. I made three sketches of the castle. In my third sketch, I drew from the mind instead of a reference, to see what would come out of that. Now I don’t want to burst the bubble of the mysterious hand, but I did not plan for this hand to appear. I was trying to go for stairs in the rock that led up to an entrance! At some point the stairs turned into a hand and I rolled with it. You know, life happened.  

Choosing colors
The biggest Unknown I ran into was being lost in my choice of colors. This is how I handled it:
1. I painted whatever came to mind in my first attempt,
2. Made a picture of the painting, opened it up in Photoshop and tweaked the colors,
3. Painted a second castle, based on my thoughts after the first attempt.
4. Concluded: needs more research.

Some people seem to be born with a natural understanding of color harmonies. I am not one of those. But what I can do is learn a bunch of theory and apply that to paper. This is where the art books in my second video came in handy!

Building a visual library
The biggest surprise for me was that I was able to create and recreate this mysterious looking castle several times. It is like I don’t have to think about the shape anymore. If I want to draw it again, I can do it without a reference. This is what people mean when they talk about creating a visual library. Look at things and draw them a hundred times and it will simply stick around in your mind! But don’t just draw what you see, try to understand why things are shaped a certain way. I think that understanding the purpose of a shape gives stability to your creation.

What I learned
Colors are not nearly as important as you might think. Values are the key to controlling the look of your art!Do you feel that your creative results look a bit messy? Or do you want to learn how to create a certain atmosphere? Go learn things about values, it might help you out. A great source of information is this book: Artists’ Master series: Color & Light. But having a good look at some world-famous paintings might give you some insight as well. I had several light-bulb moments when looking at the work of one of my favourite artists: Gustave Doré, a true master of light and dark.

I really believe that values are the secret to interesting looking art. Although ‘secret’ is the wrong word. The information is easy enough to find if you know where to look. Maybe the True Secret is that anyone can get good at making their creative works look visually attractive, as long as they are willing to learn.
Uh oh, my mind is slowly creeping towards the inevitable question: What is good art? Or even, what is art? A topic that has already been discussed so many times by so many people that I don’t know if it is worth spending time on.. The answer will always be: it depends. But I have not spend much time discussing this yet. You know what, I might just give the topic some thought. What do you think is art? What is it not? Let me know what you think and I’ll make sure to include your thoughts in my writing!

Conclusion
Even though this painting project did not exactly go as planned, I am super happy with the result. Not only did I make a somewhat balanced painting that I am quite happy with, I also got to use my little collection of art books! This castle painting would have turned out completely different without them.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little peek into my creative journey.

Thank you for reading and see you next time!