Drawing Stone

A subject I’ve found surprisingly satisfying to draw is stone built architecture. Old walls, vaults, castle ruins and cathedrals certainly fit into the medieval theme that occupies much of my artistic efforts. But the act itself can be quite enjoyable.

An appealing aspect is the combination of organic and geometric forms. It tends to be grandly symmetrical on the large scale yet wildly amorphous in the details. I really enjoy this range. It creates all kinds of possibilities for texture.

The above tower is a sketch I did from my memories of architecture in Prague. I didn’t use any photos for reference, just my recollections so it’s more a  distillation of the style than any particular building.

I’ve spent many an afternoon wandering the halls of centuries old monasteries and they always left me pensive and inspired. The above drawing is my attempt at capturing some of their quiet atmosphere.

This crumbled statue, titled Forgotten God, was inspired by a photo of a hellenistic temple ruin in Turkey. With it I learned a lot about drawing texture.

These two statues, inspired by Persepolis in Iran, were pretty quick works, again trying to learn the how-tos of stony texture, cracks, breaks, jagged edges etc.

 

A few details from other works highlighting the stonework. Something that I found it really helps to remember when drawing stone is a lesson that artists ought to have learned early on. That is, when going for realism, be sure you are drawing what you actually see. Rocks and stones, even sculpted ones, can be pretty amorphous and if you aren’t careful will end up just looking “blobby,” or worse, cartoonish. I’m especially pleased with the detail I managed to get in the first picture, the grass covered low arch. The rough face of each stone turned out pleasingly detailed.

An early drawing of another stone doorway, one of my first such attempts. A bit simple compared to what I would later learn to do but I am still happy with the perspective and the detail of the inner door frame.

Another stone doorway, this one taken from a photo I took of Marksburg Castle in Germany many years ago. The photo was high contrast and I wanted to try and get a similar value difference in the drawing, so lots of dark pencil! I really fell in love with deep shadows while drawing this one.

That feeling carried over into several other drawings. With this shadowy crypt, inspired partly by my friends novel After Life (which you can find here: http://danielionson.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/muses-and-monsters/) I tried to take the shadows to an even deeper level and really used the dead space (no pun intended). I really like the heaviness of it.

In the same vein, another shadowy, crumbly ruin.

Lastly, quiet dusty cobblestone passages under  the  dim evening sun , far from the madding crowd, with only aloof cats for company…who doesn’t love that?