The Sun

Perhaps the dot has already taken on some variation in your work, and you’ve developed works that start from the literal dot at the end of a written sentence, or from intersections of lines, where they cross and form a dot in the center, or even from a large circular area. This is a very good thing.

Depending on the distance, we can perceive a large dot on a sheet as very small if we see it from far away. There are also dots in nature. Where are they? If we look closely, we find them inside flowers. Let’s take the daisy for example, there’s the yellow inside, which is round, and on the outside the leaves are arranged around this dot. There are many other flowers that have a dot-shaped part in the center.

Of course, we also find dots in the celestial bodies. The ever-changing moon, which as a full moon is a wonderful phenomenon in the sky, where we see it completely round. The moon changes daily, once it becomes more and once less and then it forms again a whole dot. The biggest dot as seen from our planet is the sun. The sun is of very great interest especially in the history of art. There are wonderful suns in Latin American painting, in representations of the Maya and the Inca, because the sun is seen as a power given by divine beings in these cultures. The same is true for the Egyptian culture. The sun is the determining element for the prosperity and decay of life. That is why there are sun gods and celebrations, such as the summer solstice, where everything revolves around the sun.

So this round shape, this dot in our sky, has found its way into our images, too. In this impulse, I would like to encourage you to draw a sun. This is a difficult thing to do, but a very fun one. The sun is a round surface, it doesn’t necessarily have to be yellow. You can learn a lot about that, if you study the paintings of van Gogh.

For your own work, you can draw a sun with the contrast of light and dark. What is added to this round shape are lines: the rays of the sun. But from our perspective of drawing, the rays are lines. These lines can be short or long, depending on the position of the sun. On your drawing sheet, you have only the sun and only that one. We only have one in the sky, too. You’ll need several attempts to place the sun correctly. Sometimes it’s low on the horizon, sometimes it’s high in the sky. Sometimes when it sets, it feels like it’s a huge red ball and sometimes like it’s all diffuse. It depends on the atmosphere, whether there are light clouds overlaying the sun’s view. The sun on your sheet can be very low or very high. It can be central, it can be in a corner. It can be very large so that it fills almost the entire drawing sheet. It can be in a place that exactly marks the golden ratio.

Work out the sun from within and don’t indicate it with a compass. Draw it with your free hand. This results in a sun that is not perfectly round, which is very good.
Then you’ll have to work on this round shape. Look and check: is the size right, is the shape right? Only then do you decide on the lines that indicate your rays. And then you respond to this shape, not to what you’ve seen before, to a hundred thousand unfortunate suns on unfortunate pictures that we’ve encountered in our lives.

I want you to create your own sun, free from cliché and free from what you’ve already seen. Draw a sun from within. From within means that you feel into what is created on the drawing sheet by your hand. Then feel: Do you need long rays or short ones? Are these rays always in the same distance or in one that is a little different each ray? All these questions are very important. Depending on the position of your sun, you get a feel for the rays.

I hope you’ll create a very beautiful sun. May it become your sun on your drawing sheet!