Zen drawing of an angel
Jun 24, 2020
After a long period of staying at home and forced social distancing, we could finally make our first trip in months last weekend. Since we live in a small apartment in one of the most most densely populated parts of the Netherlands, we were happy that one of our favorite Airbnb locations
was still available for the weekend. Diana, the lovely owner of this small detached house -that was once built for medical staff and lies just outside Roermond close to the protected forests of the 'Meinweg'- offers a warm welcome every time we visit here. The huge garden feels more like a forest and attracts many birds, squirrels, moles and even a fox. Besides that, you will find many statues made by different African artists in her garden. These give the
garden the appearance of a gallery, museum and sculpture garden all in one.
With tonnes of inspiration in this garden to make drawings, I was surprised to find that again and again my attention was drawn to the little angel candle-holder that was standing right in front of me on the table. Even though a squirrel was visiting me every 20 minutes and there were birds, plants, flowers I could have drawn, it felt as if this little angel was 'begging' me to be drawn. So I gave it a try and to my surprise I was just as fascinated by the angel candle-holder as by all the living things around me that I usually prefer to draw.
I saw that the angel seemed both boy and girl, had an adult like chest and seemed to be younger when seen from the front then when seen in profile. Seen from my perspective it almost seemed alive, so while I was drawing I decided it should not look like a candle-holder, but like an angel that was actually alive.
As always with Zen drawing, I started with a blind contour line that gave me the basic proportions of the angel. I saw that I had to correct the wings and arms a little bit by making them a bit broader and the same was true for the part were the candle-holder was attached to the angel figure. Yet overall this first line drawing gave me the right proportions for the face, hair and showed the fragility of the innocent childlike angel I was hoping to capture.
As the light shone through the trees, resulting in bright parts and shadowy parts on the table and on my paper, I had to stop adjusting the drawing over and over again, since the shadows were changing all the time. This forced me to reflect on how I saw the candle-holder that I was drawing, rather than the way it looked like right there in front of me. In the end I decided to make some small changes to the drawing from memory and although Zen drawing is a wonderful technique to raise your visual awareness, that doesn't mean that you can't draw from memory or add something that is not really there. As long as you do that with your full awareness that is perfectly fine.
Drawing this angel took a bit longer that I expected because I was constantly distracted by that squirrel that was jumping from branch to branch and from tree to tree right in front of me. Watching it enjoying life this way was so much fun, that I lay down my pencil every now and then and just sat there to enjoy the show.
