A Work in Progress

Having recently tried my hand at Pen Line Drawing while drawing a picture of a Water Mill in the Cotswolds, I was keen to try something more ambitious. I decided to try a 'cityscape' of my home town, Northampton. I found a suitable reference photo in my albums.

Given the amount of detail in the photo I decided to use larger paper than I normally use and I opted for A3 size Medium Surface Cartridge paper (130 gsm). I had never used ink on this type of paper before but I tried a couple of pens on a sample piece and I thought it would be ok.

I printed out the reference photo on A4 paper. Again, I wanted it a reasonable size because of the amount of detail. I then ruled it into 1" squares. They don't fit exactly, but that doesn't matter.

On my cartridge paper I first selected a mount (20"x16") and measured out the visible area (14"x11"). I worked out that to get the same number of squares on my paper as I'd drawn on the photo, the squares needed to be 1.4". I measured these out and drew very feint guide lines.

The next phase was to start drawing the outlines of all the main buildings in place using pencil. At this stage I was not putting in too much detail as I was only really concerned with placing the main structures and getting the perspective right.

This was sufficient pencil work. All of the most significant structures are in place. As you will see, although my main reference photo has the blue market stalls in the left half of 'the square', I've decided to draw the nice new red ones that are now in use. They occupy a small part of the bottom right corner and I think this will help keep the eye in the picture rather than allowing it to wander out bottom right. It also makes the picture more up-to-date.

Now to start with the pen.

To firm up the structure of the drawing I have penned over the pencil lines. I had initially thought I would erase all the pencil at this point but I decided the feint grid lines might still help me with the detail that still has to be put in. I was glad left them in.

Where to start with the detail?

I don't know why but I started with the church tower just left of center and worked into the top left corner. At this stage I was a bit bothered by the mish-mash of shading lines going in all directions and I was not very pleased with how the drawing was looking.

It was very noticeable at the time that the small images posted on this web page were looking a lot better than the real thing. Working up close I could see that the individual pen strokes lacked the precision I had hoped to achieve. I could only hope that viewed from a distance, the picture would still look acceptable.

When I had a small amount done, the mish-mash of criss-cross lines looked confusing, but now that I have more completed, it was beginning to look much better.

At the outset, when I was planning my approach to this drawing, it had been my intention to leave the shading until I'd put in all the detail, but I was finding it much better doing it as I went along. At this stage I knew there were one or two area's I needed to revisit and I also suspected I would need to put in some darker shadows here and there also.

I also have to say that the more I did, the more I liked it.

Two matters had now occurred to me that I wasn't sure about. One was, how to do the large empty square area in the center. I would leave it till last obviously. The other was what to do about the distant horizon. If you look at the reference photo you will see that there is a lot of background way off in the distance. Do I put it in, or leave the skyline as it is?

Progress slowed down quite considerably at this stage as I had now started on the fronts of the buildings overlooking the square. These were proving quite a bit more difficult than the miscellaneous array of rooftops I'd been working on so far and they would play a big part in recognising the scen, so needed to be right.

I was getting excited now because it was easier to list the things remaining to be done, rather those already done. Three major areas remain .... and two of them I was very unsure about.

1. The Market Stalls. These are of Red & White striped canvas so should be easy to do.

2. The open area of the square. I thought it would be a mistake to try and draw the cobbles, and I didn't like it plain.

3. The distant outskirts of the town up to the horizon. As we all know, objects should be paler as they get further away. Lots of trees and miniscule rooftops will involve a lot of penwork which will be anything but 'pale'. I hadn't decided how to tackle this yet, but had the option of leaving the skyline as it is in this drawing, with no further detail.

Now I've dealt with points 1 and 2 above, which is good. The Market Stalls are a bit more of an eye-catcher than I'd expected them to be, but they do help frame 'the square' which was the objective. I always knew the market cobbles couldn't be drawn accurately because of how dark they would make the center of the picture, so I opted for large slabs instead. It's not true to life, but gives a good representation of a large open pedestrian area, so it will do.

LOL ... I had trouble drawing the lines freehand as you can see, but I didn't want to get a ruler out at this late stage. I was quite pleased of the fact that I hadn't used one so far (apart from the occassional pencil guide line to help with perspective). The people have worked quite well. They're not exactly life-like, but they add scale and provide interest to that large open space.

To complete the picture I needed to draw the distant outskirts of the town. These needed to be lighter than the rest of the picture and also less detailed. If you look at the reference photo you'll see that it's very hard to make out any detail although the impression of houses and trees is quite apparent. To achieve the same effect I sketched in some very loose rooftops and 'scrimbled' around them to create tree cover. Though I'm not totally disappointed with the effect, it hasn't worked quite as well as I'd hoped. This is a full size portion of the picture so you can see how it looks up close.

Although there's not a lot I can do about it now, I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has suggestions as to what I could have done instead.

Virtually finished now.

There were one or two elements I still needed to darken a tad. A couple of rooftops just in front of and to the right of the main church tower and one or two just above centre on the right hand side. Also, the whole of the bottom left corner is much lighter than the rest, but I decided to leave that because if I darkened anything around 'the square' it would lighen that central area.

The final drawing.

I found the market square too stark in contrast to the rest of the drawing. As you will see in the reference photo, the square has grey cobbles around the outside and red ones in the centre. I used this feature to darken the outsides of the square although, I have to admit, I darkenned it too much. Still, it has significantly reduced the size (and shape) of the 'square' and taken away that starkness.

The drawing has been mounted on a cream matt so as to help the cartridge paper look white and set in a silver-effect frame to compliment the monochrome picture.