You can see things with your eyes.
But you can see too with ‘your mind’s eyes’: your imagination. It’s even
possible to draw (or paint) things you see in your imagination. I have
different ways to make such drawings. About two of those I tell you this time.
The first way. I want to tell a story
in a picture. In this case the story is about an animal. It’s a real, existing
animal. But I want to show something about the animal that can’t be seen in a
photograph.
The first drawing is about a
kitten, ‘Poekie’. I made it as an illustration for a children’s story (a
product of my imagination too). Poekie is all alone, a little lost, in a dark
alley. I want to show its loneliness. I want to show it’s a cute, little
kitten. I want to show Poekie is not scared. It’s a courageous little kitten!
To be able to show all of this, it
wasn’t enough to take a photograph of a kitten and draw it just like that. I took
some photographs of kittens, to see what kittens looks like, in general. But
then I used my imagination, to change some things, to add some things. Its
shape became rounder, its eyes bigger, its black fur more reddish; so I
enhanced its ‘cuteness’. Its pose and the look in its eyes tell you: this is a
courageous kitten. And the background shows: Poekie is all alone in a dark
alley.
The second drawing was also made
using photos. In a magazine about wildlife I saw some photos of the elusive
‘red panda’. In this case I did not change much to the ‘red panda’. I only
wanted to show it’s a very cute and fuzzy looking animal. So I changed a little
to its eyes and mouth and its fur. And I fitted its shape (pose) to my paper.
Red panda, drawing in coloured pencils on Kraft paper
The second way. This is ‘totally imagination’. Maybe you can call it a ‘doodle’. I took my paper and a ballpoint and started, with no idea of what to draw.
My first thought was: a person. I
started drawing an oval shape for the head. It was at the left side of the
middle of the page. I thought: “there’s space for another person, right of the
middle”. So I made another oval head shape next to it. Then in my imagination
came the idea of two sisters, standing close together. I made some lines to
show the position of their bodies. It looked to me as if they were singing
whole heartedly. I made lines showing they each had one arm spreading out. And
so the whole picture developed while I was drawing it. When a shape became
clearer to my mind, I made it look clearer in my drawing. I added curves and
shades. So I went on until it looked good to me. Now I present to you: the ‘Singing sisters’.
Singing sisters, drawing in black Bic ballpoint
