Wishful Thinking: Drawing like Rembrandt

Comedién (Pantalone) - Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606-1669)

At times it's pretty sweet to be living in Amsterdam. Not in the last place because there are so many awesome museums available. Although today quite a few are (partially) closed for renovations. Luckily The Rembrandt House is not one of them. This museum is located in the house where Rembrandt actually lived and worked for nearly twenty years. In the house are many paintings but only a few are by Rembrandt himself, they do have a very large collection of Rembrandt's drawings and etches.

Rembrandt might be best known for his paintings but he also made fantastic drawings and etches. As a draftsman I am always very attracted to this side of the great master's work. Right now there is an exhibition at the Rembrandt House called Drawing in Rembrandt's Day. The museum also organizes a workshop focusing on seventeenth century drawing techniques. Yesterday I had the chance to join one of those workshops.

At the beginnning of the workshop we were told about the different materials artists used to draw with in the time of Rembrandt. They used charcoal, graphite, crayons, as well as inks and ink washes. The ink they used is called Bistre Ink and has this wonderful brown color to it. They used brushes and pens made out of reed. Rembrandt also was fond of using a goose quill pen. At the workshop there were only a few quill pens, but luckily most other people there were happy to use the other pens and skewers that were offerd, so I got to use one of the quills throughout the workshop.

The image above is a smaller sketch paper that I used to try the different materials, we were encouraged to test the way different tecniques and materials could be combined. After we had messed about a little we were given a large sheet of paper and were given a photo we could use as inspiration. I chose a picture of a church and set to work: setting tones with a brush, and adding details with the quill pen.

I am always trying to work very controlled and I had fun using the bistre ink because it forced me to let go a little. I wish we had had more time! Apparantly bistre ink is still for sale today and I really want to get some of it to do more drawings like these. The quill actually worked really nice but I think that a regular dip pen would work just as well. (I will probably not make my own quill pen, it's rather complicated: you have to cook the quill and then have to cut it with a razor blade)

This is the final drawing I did. It's not completely finshed. I would have liked to add a little more detail. Still it shows the nice effect of the ink washes and especially at the tower you can see the loose lines of the quill pen.

 

After we had cleaned the brushes we went back to the museum and looked at the exhibition. Looking at these drawings after just having used the same material changed my perception. To show you what Rembrandt did with the same material I posted a drawing that was part of the exhibition, at the top of this article. If you look carefully you can see that he made a correction to the guys arm (screen right), he drew it in line first and then chanced the shape with a brush to enhance the gesture.

Gangster Doodles

Some tough guys that visited my faithful note paper today. By the way, I do not work on cardboard and old brown-paper bags all the time, I just hate the way black lines look on a white background when watched on a screen. So I always add some old paper texture for your viewing pleasure.

Ink and some marker on paper.

Accidental Dracula

When I'm working I always have this blank sheet of paper ready to write down stuff I should look up, and things I shouldn't forget. But of course the paper gets doodled upon as well. Today I accidently did this Dracula, I actually think it doesn't look all bad so I thought I'd share it with you.

Dracula is one of my favourite things to draw, I rather like vampires as long as they are cool-dude-vampires like Dracula. (you know: aristoctratic, creepy acent, evening dress) I don't really care for the cry-baby-buffed-up-shirtless-teenpic-vampire that seems to be so popular these days though... 

Checkered

A warm-up sketch I did today. Ink on paper, and some digital colors. Based on a photo from the Sartorialist. 

It's been a bit slow here on the blog, I'm working on a few things but haven't got anything to show, yet. If all goes well this should change soon!

Rough Ezio

I'm trying to do an Assassin's Creed piece, but I'm having a tough time. One of the things that's giving me trouble is the hood. The assassin's hood has this little flap hanging down in front of his face. In real life this would look stupid, it would also be quite impractical since it would be constantly in your eyes, obstructing your view. But in the game, of course it looks really cool and mysterious, it ties in with the whole bird of prey thing they got going; it looks like a beak.  

I like the rough look of the older Ezio. (I want my heroes old and grim: Batman, Solid Snake, The Dude) I haven't played Revelations yet but I'm anxious to get to it. Old Ezio has a beard -which rocks- and he is also more buffed than young Ezio. I also quite like the furry parts they added to his costume. These are some sketches I did of Ezio, the two left ones are of him wearing the Armor of Brutus, that you can unlock in Brotherhood. The one on the right is Ezio as he appears in the trailer from Revelations.

I hope to have more to show you soon!

Ink on paper, digital colors.

Do You Need Some Time On Your Own?

Can you remember when MTV actually used to play music all day? I grew up during the golden age of the music video, and I feel a little sad for kids today because they have to miss all these awesome videos. Of course a music video was never much more than a commercial for a band or artist, and I guess they helped the evil music industry to stay in power, but there really were some sweet videos back then!
 
The other day I was hanging out with a friend when I began to doodle Slash rocking his guitar outside that little church, in the video of November Rain. It amazed me how many details of the video I could remember. (This is not that doodle by the way, I watched the video before I drew this one.) It made me think how music videos used to be everywhere when I was in high school and how they have quickly disappeared in this digital age. Maybe I'll do some more drawings based on music videos, I had a lot of fun with this one.

Pencil, ink and (paint)markers on grey skectch paper.

Oh, and by the way... Happy new year!

Drive Corner

As you might have noticed I thought Drive was a pretty cool film. I especially liked the whole 1980's vibe of the film. I also think that Ryan Gosling's jacket is pretty cool. I had this image of the Driver as a comic book character; the jacket is really not unlike a superhero's costume, it even has a logo on it.

The image of the Driver as some kind of comic book hero inspired me to the illustration above, for the awesome Cornered Blog. Some of you might remember that I did another corner for them back in March. (That one was also based on a film, btw.)  

I really hope you also like my Drive Corner!

Ink on paper, digital colors and lay-out.

Another Driver

Another drawing of the Driver. The color is based on an effect I saw in The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke, it is not completely similar but that also has a lot to do with my lines, Darwyn Cooke left more open space and also draws with color; he does the inking and coloring of the Parker comics himself. The colors are also done tradiotionally with a PITT artist brush pen.

This drawing of mine was done with ink on paper and digital colors. I will try to do some colored drawings the way Mister Cooke did his, might be a cool exercise.

Recently I'm experimenting a lot with different halftone effects. I have always liked halftones and had a tough time to find out how to recreate the old fashioned print effects in Photoshop. It feels like I'm getting closer, though!

That line is from the book by James Sallis btw, which is also pretty cool.