Drawing... a review on Waterloo.

I chose to look at Anthonie Waterloo's landscaped depictions as the attention to detail and the realness of the images made me just go "Wow" literally! I just really wanted to have a go at a more realistic type of image. I think this type of experimentation was really helpful in my own development in drawing as it would give me a sense of really putting down the detail and taking my time in drawing as i find sometimes I'm to quick. I had a go at his image Wooded Landscape (Above) that was produced between 1630 and 1690. I really enjoyed the sharp contrasts between light and dark and the greys in-between and the attention to detail that is so obvious in his drawings. Also liked the fact i got to try another type of media I'm not too familiar with so it was a challenge for me to use the charcoal for a whole drawing that was so detailed. I liked the fact that many of his pieces are hard to find as his images haven't been as commercially advertised as say Rembrandt and his drawings are fairly unknown in the whole picture of art history.

This was my initial go at Waterloo's style of drawing. I feel the  image is quite blocked and it doesn't have the same atmosphere as Waterloo's images hopefully this will develop through trying his technique a couple of times and improve the image. Here i started on the tree on the left and worked my way right as i want sure where to start. Find the chalk quite easy to use... not an expert yet ( but then again no one really becomes an expert in art)  Need to work on my leaves and the branches!

This one again i worked from the left to right think this image looks  quite squashed and the hill and observation in my part just looks wrong. Certainly need to practise more, on this one!

I find this one has came more into Waterloo's style more so on the right hand side, does again look abit squashed on the right hand side though - need to work on my composition. Branches look to bold as well and looks as though the leaves are only behind them, need to work on this in future pieces, Need to think about where everything lies and how the things behind work with what's in front!

In this image i feel the leaves havn't worked they look to smudges which isn't a Waterloo characteristic, think would be better doing the leaves in layers creating the back ones with a little smudge and doing the leaves further into the foreground with no smudge and more definition! This image also has became curved for some unknown reason (to me anyway). think i need to work on making the leaves darker still looks like leaves are all behind the branches.

Again here with the leaves... WORK ON THE LAY OF THE LAND!  DON'T THINK 2D get a grasp of the 3D  image in front of you!

Think the depiction of the leaves has improved in this image. but think the hill in the background at the back is to large and to defined needs to be blurred a lot more to look further away! 

Okay his does not work. don't know what happened here but  you know you learn from what you've done, the hills to high the branches to black the thing just looks rubbish! Need to add more leaves.. literally fallen off the trees as I've went through the stages.. need to get a grip on this!

Squished! that's all am gonna say!

Okay so these are much better think I've learnt from those past rubbish tries at Waterloo's image/ technique. Think I've got more of a clue on how to do the leaves and create the texture on the tree ( using small/quick strokes in different pressures  and trying to create an image that doesn't look as 2D and more 3D! 

This was a start at trying the whole of the image on an A3 size piece of paper starting with the larger areas in the background and sort of working forward rather than side to side really helps - which was Waterloo's technique, haven't a clue why i chose to do them left to right maybe because i didn't know where i was going or what i was doing). Think working this way gives you more of an indication of where things should lie in the foreground so things are compositionally more in place!

I then added in the trees and started drawing in the texture on the bark and the grass and bush areas.  from that i could then place all the objects in the correct place and it gave me sense of the overall composition of the final image.

This is what the image looked like before i added the leaves which i left to last as they were the most detailed and time consuming part of the whole image. 

This is the final image i produced for Anthonie Waterloo. Really proud of  the image I've produced in the end. think  i finally got the jist of Waterloo's style and how to create one of this type of drawing, even though am not perfect at it (Always room to learn!). The leaves did take me an awful lot of time, and you can tell why i tried to create depiction of detail that is so evident in Waterloo's images and think I've certainly improved in my observation as you really had to look at the images to see every mark that was made. I think this style of drawing has helped me as its helped me take into account everything around the subject as well as the main subject matter and think about the image as a whole and think about the composition and the evidence in seeing everything that comes across.

Thankyou for reading :)
Annie x