Via Ghibellina in Florence

This was the view of the courtyard from the apartment where we stayed while visiting Florence. I intended to add some colours, waiting for the end of the afternoon to have some interesting shadows, but never get a chance to do it...

Via Ghibellina in Florence - Sepia ink pen drawing by Benoit Philippe

Café Bretelles

Café Bretelles - Ink pen and watercolour by Benoit Philippe

Café Bretelles is a charming independent coffee place located 36 Rue du Bain-aux-Plantes — 67000, Strasbourg, France. It is in the area of the city called Petite France, with old houses, waterways and a fair number of tourists (including me).

I went there for breakfast and I would definitely recommend the place: excellent coffee, great baguette and the melon and vanilla jam was homemade…

In Vino Veristas

In Vino Veritas - Black Ink pen and watercolour by Benoit Philippe

In Vino Veritas is a Restaurant & Wine Bar located 25 Place de la Cathédrale, 67000 Strasbourg, France.

The two reasons I picked this subject were the bright orange fabric of the umbrellas and the fact that I could seat in the shade on the other side of the street (the side wall of the Cathedral of Strasbourg has a convenient stone bench).

Two views of the Cathedral of Strasbourg

The Cathedral of Strasbourg (in Alsace, France) is an imposing building at the heart of the old city.

For these drawings, I did not draw with a black ink pen as I often do. I drew the structure with a mechanical pencil and then painted with my Sennelier watercolour paints.

The Cathedral of Strasbourg viewed from  the Quai des Bateliers

The Cathedral of Strasbourg viewed from the top floor of the Museum of Modern Art.

Bus travel sketches

Travelling always comes with dead time and sketching is a good way to use it.

Heathrow Bus Station's coffee shop (London)

The bus driver

Good Mooring

Good Mooring by Benoit Philippe - graphite on watercolour paper (21 x 30 cm)

For this drawing, I used:

• Canson Montval watercolour paper (300 g/m2)
• Uni Kuru Toga mechanical pencil 
• Caran d'Ache Grafwood 9B

Silhouette drawing

I drew a series of 10 silhouettes. It's a good exercise that pushes you to explore various shapes and attitudes.

As there is no details other than the ones that stick out at the periphery, I had to think about accessories that would agive a clue about the character.


This exercise is used by concept artists to generate a large number of variations within a short time.

For my own attempt, I drew with a Faber-Castell PITT brush pen, which is pointy enough for details but has a long tip that makes blocking-in the shape easy.

I spent no more than three or four minutes for each charater.
Silhouette drawing is not only for cartoonesque characters. A first application in "serious" art is to paint figures in the light.

 Claude Joseph Vernet - Seaport by Moonlight [Source: Wikimedia]

A silhouette well placed can bring drama or mistery to a painting. The more striking example I can think of is the silhouette that Velázquez placed in the door frame for his painting Las Meninas.

Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez [Source: Wikimedia ]

I you want to avoid boredom in your painting, then all figures should result in a different silhouette. Let me take the example of the painting Bonjour Monsieur Courbet, by the French painter Gustave Courbet, to illustrate the point.

Gustave Courbet - The Meeting or Bonjour Monsieur Courbet [Source: Wikimedia]

After I blackened each figure, the characters are all distinct. You could even guess, from the silhouette alone, the mood of each of these character. Courbet, on the right, holds his head high. With his long walking stick, he seems very stable and looks statuesque. The gentleman in the middle is welcoming with his arms open. As for the third gentleman on the left, he respectfully bow his head and looks humble.

Victor Hugo’s Drawings

When visiting Victor Hugo’s house in Paris, I was hoping to see again some of Hugo's drawings I saw in the past. But there were only two examples on display (and not the best ones) depicting pieces of furniture. Drawings are fragiles and are only shown during special exhibitions.

 

 

 

 

 

During his life, Victor Hugo produced more than 4000 drawings. He worked on paper (often on vellum paper) with pen, ink washes (black and brown) and occasionally some colours.

 

In his dark brown or black drawings, he sometimes created highlights with white gouache. He experimented with different techniques: using stencils, blotting the paper, printing with laces, scratching the surface… He was able to instil mystery and drama into his works.

 

He had a clear fascination for architecture and liked inventing castles and other buildings. He deployed in his drawing the same avid imagination that feed his literary works.

 

Some more abstract drawing may have come from Spiritualist séances (that he hosted in his home).

 

Below are some of Victor Hugo’s drawings from Wikimedia. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

I kept my favourite for last:

  

Related resources

 

You can see more drawings by Victor Hugo at the following sites:

• Drawings in the Victor Hugo Museum’s collection
• Exhibition at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France

 

Le Regal – Watercolour and ink

Last week, the whole family was in Ardeche in Le Regal, a hamlet near Antraigues-sur-Volane (France).

Le Regal - Watercolour and ink by Benoit Philippe (Click on the image to enlarge)

The access road to the house was so narrow that you could only cross another car at a few points. We had to reverse more than once…

The garden looked beautiful and I sat under a tree, at the beginning of the afternoon, to make this painting.

The process is different from the usual ink drawing with colour washes (that I also like to do). I followed this order:

1. Pencil outline
2. Masking fluid to reserve some areas
3. Watercolour painting (on day one)
4. Ink drawing on top of the watercolour (on day two)

This approach gives interesting results:

• I don’t need to draw everything because the colours are already building the image. The ink drawing is more “open”, add some accents or bring out the focal point.

• The ink drawing does not need to coincide precisely with the painting. I could add details with the ink drawing that were not in the watercolour painting, or even draw aside from the brush stroke, creating some interesting tension. A photograph of a detail (see below) will show you what I mean.

Le Regal - detail (Click on the image to enlarge)

Travel to Brive-la-Gaillarde sketches

Last week-end, I went to Brive-la-Gaillarde in France for my niece's wedding. I managed to do a few sketches.

On my way to London. 

People who sleep are always good subjects... The initial drawing was done with  a fine Faber-Castell black pen. I added some grey shading with Faber-Castell grey brush pens. For the colour, I used a selection of Pentel ink pen brushes (see below). Moleskine sketchbooks won't take watercolour washes, but ink brushes work well on this paper. I still need to buy a yellow one.

A sketch done in 2 minutes at Collonges la Rouge - a beautiful medieval village

Breakfast at the Formule 1 hotel

On neuroscience, telephone poles and accurate drawing

What is the common point between neuroscience, telephone poles and accurate drawing?

I was listening to a fascinating podcast, The Brain Science Podcast. In Episode 73, Doctor Ginger Campbell was interviewing Doctor Shapiro, Professor of Philosophy and author of the book “Embodied Cognition (New Problems of Philosophy)"

A discussion around the end of the podcast caught my ears.

Source: MorgueFile [Image URL]

Dr. Shapiro gave an example on how problems that seem complicated can sometimes get resolved easily by focussing on one parametre.

Dr. Shapiro: “Yes. Gibson has lots of examples of what appear to be computationally onerous tasks, but it turns out that there are very simple solutions that rely on picking up certain information in the environment. So, here’s a neat example: If you have two telephone poles that are the same height—50 feet tall, let’s say—and one of them is behind the other, the question is: how do you figure out which one is closer and which one is further. No, sorry; the question is: are they the same height—let’s make that the question. And in order to answer that, it seems like a computational problem: you have to figure out how far they are from you, and then certain trigonometric relationships will tell you whether they’re the same height.

But what Gibson realized was that objects at the same height will have the same proportion of themselves below the horizon and above the horizon. So, two telephone poles that are 50 feet tall, if one is 100 feet away and the other is 50 feet away, they’ll still be cut by the horizon with the same proportion beneath the horizon and above the horizon. And that tells you that they’re the same height.


You don’t have to do any sort of computations.”

You can reverse the statement made in the paragraph I highlighted in bold: If you are drawing telephone poles along a road vanishing towards the horizon their size will get smaller, but they will be cut by the horizon with the same proportion beneath the horizon and above the horizon (because you know they are the same height).

Knowing this principle can be useful when drawing a vanishing series of posts or lamposts.

 Brain Science Podcast Doctor Ginger Campbell Doctor Shapiro perspective drawing

Weiss beer, please!

On a recent trip to Munich, I had a Weiss beer over dinner. But before I drank it, I thought I would do a quick sketch. As there was nothing to make a good sketch in the restaurant conservatory, I ended-up drawing what was in front of me, on the table.

I had with me my Moleskine sketchbook and a newly purchased set of four Sanguine PITT artist pens (Small, Fine, Medium and Brush). This set is more limited that the grey set (see my post Working on tones and values with felt pens) because they are all the same shade of sanguine ink. So if you want shading, you have to criss cross the surface.

I like the colour of the ink and I look forward to see how it will do with colour washes. As the pigmented drawing ink is waterproof, these pens would be ideal.

Sanguine PITT artist pen Sketching Drawing Still life

Drawing shadow areas from reference photographs

As I explained in an earlier article (see Working from photographs), details in photograph get lost in shadow areas. I have this issue when I print my reference photographs with my home printer on a sheet of A4 photo paper.

One way I found that helps with seeing details in the shadow areas consists in manipulating the photograph in Photoshop Element. I am using Adobe Photoshop Element 6.

If you want to invest in a good photo manipulation program, which remains easy to use and still has many features, go for the last version of this software which is currently Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 (PC DVD). There is also a version for Mac: Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 (Mac).

After I opened the photograph in Photoshop Element, I selected from the menu Filter/Sketch/Photocopy. The result was a negative black and white photograph.

I then had to invert the photograph to get the positive view: Filter/Adjustments/Invert. The result looked a little bit pale, so I decided to give it more contrast.

I applied Filter/Adjustment lighting/Brightness-Contrast. Using the cursor, I lowered the brightness to minus 88 (- 88) and boosted the contrast to 35 (+ 35).

Related articles

10 ways a painter can use digital photography 



Art studio tip Drawing Reference photograph Abobe Photoshop Elements

Moebius Transe Forme exhibition (Paris – France)

The Fondation Cartier in Paris (France) exhibits Moebius work until March 13, 2011. The theme of the exhibition is transformation or metamorphosis. The artist’s science fiction work, in particular, shows morphing worlds where characters dissolve into their universe.

There is a long tradition of “bande dessinée” (comic strips) in France with a multitude of authors. Jean Giraud is a prolific author and uses various styles. Under the name or Gir (Short for “Giraud”), he created with Jean-Michel Charlier the series Blueberry, the story of a cowboy in the Wild West.

He also developed some science fiction stories under the alias Mœbius. He took this alias after the famous Moebius strip and explained: “Going from Giraud to Moebius, I warped the strip, changed dimension. I was the same and I was different. Moebius is the result of my duality.” this strange one sided volume. These science fiction comic strips have a surrealist touch. The artist uses his exuberant imagination to create poetic and strange parallel universes. He published Arzach in1976 and Le Garage hermétique in 1979. In 1980, he collaborated with Alexandro Jodorowsky on a new series titled L’Incal.

Giraud also collaborated on a number of movies, like Alien, Tron or Besson’s “The Fifth Element”, for which he created the Diva character.

The exhibition features many original ink drawings from Blueberry as well as science fiction works, in black and white and colour. A master of the line drawing, Giraud’s technique is reminiscent of Albrecht Dürer. Some of the paintings in ink or acrylic have a luminescent quality, with a great attention to details.

Visitors will also watch “La planète Encore”, an eight minutes animation 3D movie co-created by Geoffrey Niquet and Moebius, and travel even further inside the artist’s unique world.

Discovering Moebius

• The drop-down menu on the exhibition website gives you access to a peek view of the limited edition catalogue and some videos of the artist.
• Wikipedia entry for Jean Giraud
• Moebius official website (in French) 
• Blueberry official site 
• Jean Giraud on Lambiek Comiclopedia (English) 
• Moebius on Lines and Colors 

Practical information

Moebius Transe Forme

12 October 2010 to 13 March 2011

Fondation Cartier

261 Boulevard Raspail

75014 Paris, France

Practical information on the Fondation Cartier website (in French and English)

Moebius Jean Giraud Gir Fondation Cartier Art Exhibition Comic strip Bande dessinée

Travel sketches

The Channel crossing from Dover (England) to Calais (France) gave me an opportunity to sketch. I was able to set-up on one of the coffee table in the lounge and make a couple of quick sketches. Drawing is also relaxing after you drove for a few hours on snowy roads.

The advantage of sketching figures on a ferry is that people tend to stay longer in the same place: they sleep, rest, read a book, or check messages on their mobile phones.



This sketch was done with a black Faber Castell PITT artist pen on a Moleskine sketchbook. I tried to add a wash of watercolour, but the paper of the skekchbook is coated and does not take the water. I had to switch to my selection of Faber Castell PITT artist pens to add some colours.

The sketches above and below were done on a different sketchbook (made by Hahnemühle FineArt). It is in a landscape format and the paper, of excellent quality, takes watercolour well. Like Moleskine notebooks, it has an elastic band to close it, a pocket on the inside of the back cover and a bookmark ribbon. I had with me a Sennelier travel box with 12 half-pans of watercolour.

More on using a ruler for watercolour

In an earlier post, 10 ways to improve your watercolours with a ruler, I wrote that a ruler is useful when tracing objects like buildings in perspective. In particular, verticals remain vertical and this is also something you can trace with a ruler. Even if you don’t want to trace everything with the ruler, at least consider the main outlines.

If you have a drawing table, like James Gurney, then tracing vertical lines is not a problem. This is not a practical solution if you are travelling or away from your studio.

An alternative solution is to use a translucent plastic ruler, graduated on both sides with the same units (it does not really matter if it is centimetres or inches, but you cannot use a ruler that has one side in centimetres and one side in inches).

This is the way I do it:

• I trace a frame all around the sheet of paper with at least one centimetre margin.


• To draw a vertical line, I position the ruler perpendicular to the horizontal frame line at the top of the page. To ensure the ruler is really vertical, I check that the marks on each side of the ruler are aligned on the horizontal frame line (as shown on the photograph).

Watercolour Watercolour Ruler Studio tip Studio hack Drawing Perspective

Free eBook: Creative Exercises for Artists and everyone else

It's here, it's published and it's FREE!

This 36 pages free eBook is a collection of 17 practical exercises for artists. I have learnt some of them over the years and designed some to fulfil my own needs. I am a painter, so most of these exercises are visual ones. However, many of them do not require specific artistic skills and are suitable for anyone regardless of their age or level of artistic ability.

These exercises are varied and you probably already own most of the required materials. You can use them as warm-up before you start a new project or as a way to explore new avenues.

I also hope teachers will use these exercises in their classes as they are great fun.

Go to this page to read it or download your PDF copy now.

A visit at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

The museum is well-known for its Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Sir Edward Burne-Jones was a Birmingham-born artist and one of the rooms only contains his works.

Room dedicated to Sir Edward Burne-Jones' works

drawings by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

The Blind Girl (Oil Painting) by John Everett Millais is a fine example of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings. The technique is amazing, almost too perfect. Even the finest details of the houses in the background are there.

The Last of England - Oil Painting by Ford Madox Brown (Click on the photo to enlarge). The painting represents a couple the couple departing for Australia.

The museum has created an excellent website to promote its permanent Pre-Raphaelite collection.

When we visited the museum, I saw an exhibition of the Perseus Series Edward Burne-Jones (Exhibition from 28th February 2009 until 4th October 2009). The paintings are on loan from Stuttgart's Staatsgalerie. This is the first time that the complete set of eight paintings has been shown in the UK. These paintings were very dark in mood as in colour... quite depressing in fact.

The Perseus Series Edward Burne-Jones

The museum owns a magnificent oil painting by Pissarro titled - Le Pont Boieldieu à Rouen, Soleil Couchant (The Pont Boieldieu at Sunset).

In 1896, Pissarro went to Rouen and stayed at a hotel overlooking the bridge. Between 8 September and 12 November, he completed 15 canvasses, including this view The Pont Boieldieu at Sunset.

Le Pont Boieldieu à Rouen, Soleil Couchant by Pissarro

There is also an interesting composition by Guillaumin: Les Environs de Paris (Oil Painting).

Les Environs de Paris (Oil Painting) by Guillaumin

Guillaumin is one of the less known Impressionist painters. He was friend with Camille Pissarro and was only able to become a full time painter after he won 100,000 Francs at the French lottery in 1891. The painting “Les Environs de Paris” was show at the third Impressionist exhibition of 1877.

Madame Renoir sculpted by Auguste Renoir

Portrait of Mademoiselle Marie Fantin-Latour - Oil painting by Henri Fantin-Latour. This portrait of the artist's sister was rejected by the Salon of 1859.

Bronze sculptures of dancers by Degas

Madame X by Modigliani

You can browse or search the entire collection on the museum main website.


Details for the museum

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3DH
Admission: FREE. Some exhibitions charge an admission fee.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery website

Photographs are permitted (except in a few rooms for copyright reason) provided it is not for commercial purpose and that you sign the appropriate form at the entrance desk.


Related article

The Lady Lever Art Gallery also has an extensive collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.