This article is about Atlanta skyline #025Z pen & ink drawing, which is for sale at discount with prints by artist Stephen F. Condren, BFA-SAIC, of Condren Galleries, a Fine Arts Gallery, offering JPEG & PDF scans. This article is about my pen & ink night time drawing of Lake Clara Meer at Piedmont Park, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Skyline Pen & Ink Drawing Key Points:
- Have all of your art supplied and gear in place.
- Bring lighting to allow you to work.
- Spend a long time looking at the city lights to understand the contour of the buildings.
It is not a common practice to do landscape drawings at night. However, if you are only in town for a short time take advantage of this. It is my practice to do as much as I can in the short time that I am usually in places.
It is amazing just how much that you can see at night when you have set up your easel or table. There are many kinds of lighting fixtures to choose from. One you have your lighting in place it is quiet easy to work. The flip side of the coin however, is that you need to keep your working light at a lower than usual level of brightness because you need to be able to see out into the dark and thus your pupils need to dilate to take in that light. If you have bright lights on around you, then you will not be able to focus on things out in the darkness.
Cross hatching is king! In this pen & ink drawing cross hatching has become indispensable due to the darkness. However, you cannot let the darkness take over. If you make too many hatch marks then the drawing becomes to dense and then ruined. Remember it is not easy to see in the dark and then you have to take into account your eye adjustment between viewing the site and refocusing in the brighter light of your easel.
As dark as the scene was I have made the trees light so as to create a negative space to hold the composition together. There is an abundance of light in the center of the lagoon as well as on the building in the background. The deep darkness of the center sky behind the skyline makes for a wonderful perspective drawing without vanishing points.