The Court's pond (De Hofvijver) - 26-11-15

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When in The Hague

This graphite pencil drawing ‘The Court’s Pond (de Hofvijver)’ depicts a place I know very well. It is the pond next to the dutch House of Parliament and the Prime Minister's tower at The Hague. Despite attempts to lift the city up to modern times by building skycrapers it managed to keep its village-like atmosphere. To me the centre is everlasting appealing for extensive walks searching for artistic motifs. Often it doesn’t look like a world famous city when you linger through back alleys straight from the 17th century. Nevertheless it’s the capital of peace of the world and I like to think of it that way.

Water Diamonds

Even though I drew the Hofvijver before there is always room for new inspiration. So it happened one day all of a sudden I was fascinated by the sparkling light shimmering over the water. Those sparkles created diamond facets hurting your eyes. Light reflections always are very rewarding. Therefor I decided to capture them and I began at the very spot. That’s just a start mostly because finishing at the sport doesn’t happen often.

Finish at Home

Also this time. The drawing took longer that I thought. So I went back home where I saw the shimmering was not intense enough. That is when I came to the conclusion I needed to block in those lights even more radically. The façade of the Mauritshuis and ’t Torentje I hatched over at least two tones darker. The water directly under the buildings I even made way darker. It was enough to let the highlights come popping out. The old buildings look great, the water grand. Don’t you think the little things in life are much more important?

Graphite pencil (Pentel 0.5 mm, 3B) on Canson Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm - A4 format)
Artist: Corné Akkers