My Niece

And it so happens my niece Lilian turned out to be a great photographer. Lo and behold, artistry runs deep in the veins of our family and I asked her to use a beautiful photo she took of a treeline in Puiflijk, near to where she lives.

Direct Cause

Direct cause to draw this one, next to the photo, is a discussion I had with a friend of mine (Piet-Jan) about the meaning of ‘The Star and Crescent’, being a symbol in islamic traditions, only for us to find out the invention of the very symbol stretches back another 1000 years prior to islam. Something powerful is happening here for sure. Anyway, boom! There it was, Lilian’s photo arrived in the mid of our discussion and there you have it: the Universe intervened.

Royal Estate ‘De Horsten’

When I looked at the picture a previous graphite pencil drawing Royal Estate ‘De Horsten’ – 23-10-15 came to mind instantly and that is a blessing and a curse at the same time. The rendering of such a piece also can get in the way and I wanted to convey some other feeling in a different style. So I tried to dissociate myself from it and feel what I wanted to say 5 years later, on treelines but also the crescent of the moon.

Flow and Checkered Patterns

Albeit the picture capturing a great moment it was a bit blurry. From my own experience I know tree branches and trunks easily can be rendered too sharp and thus do not correspond with the way the human view works. When you for example look at a tree, you do not see the individual brances clearly and vice versa. The solution was to make circular patterns and a trick I learned when I was young: checkered patterns to get some subtle contrasts. Hence, the flow that swirls through the sky and clearly demonstrates the feel we all can have looking at the crescent.

Click here to read about the sale of this artwork to an English collector through 1stdibs.com.

Graphite pencil drawing (Pentel 0.5 mm, 3B) on Canson Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm – A4 format)

Artist: Corné Akkers