The Balder in Vlaardingen
In Vlaardingen I was for an exhibition of Julia Filament’s works and I was a bit early. Intentionally because I wanted to visit the old center. That is the area directly surrouding the ‘Grote Kerk’ and of course the harbour. Last year I came to this town for the first time. I made a graphite pencil drawing out of it, called ‘Vlaardingen – 14-09-16’. Strange how gems like these are hidden in plain sight. I suppose you don’t visit them because there is no direct reason to do so. There are so many daily matters to attend to already. One forgets to open one’s mind and visit a place you have never been before all too easily. That was not today and I was rewarded once again. Even though I had architecture in mind my eye caught the features of a beautiful ship, called the ‘Balder’.
Singularity in Boats
For no particular reason a previous drawing ‘Rotterdam – Delftshaven – 31-03-17 (sold)’ popped into my mind. Well, that’s one of them and I am trying to say, I was attracted to water reflections. That drawing surely had some lovely ones to offer and now I saw the same here. However, I was in my singularity mode since my last pencil drawing ‘Roundism (Singularity) – 01-06-17’. Therefor I decided to make this depiction more abstract. Hence, the reflections of the ship in styled abstract blocks. From a tonal point of view I put the focus entirely on the ship. This is even more underligned by the jetty running up to the ship in a diagonal angle, creating lovely dynamics. I counterbalanced all things hefty with some abstracted tree branches in the upper right corner. They are lighter and almost translucent. This way I had the opportunity to create necessary tonal contrasts.
Graphite pencil drawing (Pentel 0.5 mm, 3B) on Lana Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.01 cm - A4 format)
Artist: Corné Akkers
