Blasting in the Sun

The St. James Church (Grote of St.-Jacobskerk) is situated in The Hague. Quite an extraordinary church with its hexagonal bell tower and it towers over the old city most strikingly. I often pass it by, shopping for art supplies. Then one day the sun was bursting out of the sky. Consequently the church rooftop was blasting in the sun. Struck by the light I was and the church was heavily backlighted and dark at the bottom. It almost hurt my eyes and that’s when I thought of an expressionist pastel to capture this moment.

Mondriaan

In fact I had this idea coming already for a long time. The yellow spotted sky I borrowed as an idea of Mondriaan. He painted the church tower at Domburg a couple of times and his depiction of a sky inspired me to experiment as well. My addition is placing purple and yellow patches next to eachother. I pulled these tricks before as you can read in my art stament to Roundism – 13-03-18. In short the complementary yellow / purple scheme tickles your eyes like sunlight would. Therefor light should be depicted by colors in contrast to the fact that all colors make light.

Double Whammy

The other complementary color mix I used is orange / blue. The result is a double whammy of color brilliancy. To top it off I used only a little green in the tree branches. It is an anomaly that serves as an accent with regard to composition. Personally my favorites are the edgy cast shadows of the church on the pavement. Makes me plan for some more of such urban pastel drawings.

Pastel drawing on Canson Mi-Teintes Touch paper (47 x 63 x 0.1 cm)

Artist: Corné Akkers

Sales info: info@corneakkers.com

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