I had previously sketched this on day 2 of my field sketches, again I had photographed the scene for reference, this came to be very useful when adding color. I wanted to try to make this image quite vibrant, I decided that some brush tipped pens would add some string instant color and my set had some really nice exaggerated autumnal hues.
I dulled the drawing with the putty rubber and looked among my brush pens for suitable colors. I didn’t want to use any black ink, I found a dark purple that was almost brown, this would be my darkest tone, each tree had a distinct color so I tried to work in blocks of hue and applied the appropriate tones in each colors range. Each tree had a different color or texture, or even for some decoration such as fungus or leaves.
I really enjoyed this exercise, adding color really brought the scene to life. The brush pens were capable of delivering all sorts of marks from thin lines to by bold strokes, the nice thing about pressing hard was the strokes become broken where the ink ran dry towards the end. I’m pleased I resisted adding line work to the image,especially where the distant trees start to look faded and pale, almost misty.
I have seen Hokusai’s wave many times before, I have included it here although technically that may be classed as a seascape, its sharpness and vibrancy has always stood out, when you look a little deeper you can see, he translates the ordinary landscape into his own bold colour saturated world. His most used medium is paint and wood block prints. I really enjoy the way his images are almost layered and layed flat on each other until it reaches the horizon, I could almost imagine the images moving in a parallax motion. The level of depth and distinct style means I can look at each part and really study each part of the image, everything rendered in great detail, even the objects that have been placed far away from the viewer, tell a little story or supply a narrative. Hokusai was born in 1760 and died in 1849, but while we can see these works or old and even ancient, the style wouldn’t be out of place in a magazine, comic book or film poster. The wave always seems so fresh, its no coincidence the image has been parodied and celebrated in popular culture and art.
Born in Suffolk and focusing on the Essex and Suffolk areas of east England, John Constable was primarily a landscape artist. His color palette is always the first thing that impresses upon me, muted browns and greens, often partnered with blue grey turbulent skys. Swirling clouds painted with such intense movements it borders on violent. I really cant say I get a happy feeling from his work, although reading about him he clearly loved his surrounding areas. In his wikipedia entry it states that he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, “I should paint my own places best”, and “painting is but another word for feeling”. I wanted to include him in my research as he really does produce a mood, and it doesn’t have to be a happy one for the viewer. I can remember my Nan having a similar picture in her house although this looked more like a dutch scene. And it had a very eerie quality to it, with its muted colors and frozen scene depicting rural life below an ominous sky. You cant deny the craft and artistry that has went into his work, the textures he creates alone are inspiring to any creative person.
David Hockney is the only contemporary artist I studied for this research point, as I write this he is alive and 83 years old, he shows little signs of slowing down, most prolific in the 60’s he still creates art having an exhibition as recently as 2019. He has also made a transition from paint to digital art, producing works on apple devices and Photoshop. His work is always vibrant and ranges from almost abstract shapes to highly detailed. The world must always looks like a really interesting place through Hockney’s trademark round glasses.
After my research of landscapes and seeing John Constables depiction of clouds, I was rather looking forward to this exercise. My first sketch I tried to outline the shape of the cloud,the sharp lines gave some good definition but felt a little too rigid, I softened up the graphite on my paper, taking a piece of kitchen towel, I worked the medium deep into the papers tooth, I then took a putty rubber and lifted out the lightest areas of cloud. I also used a plastic eraser, to really rub away the marks although this was less accurate. I liked working in reverse taking away the graphite to lighten up my drawing. I tried this approach in my next drawings, trying to use less definite marks.
I decided that my next attempt would have no linear values, I used the edge of my graphite stick across the paper and worked this in with the now heavily graphite infused paper towel, the medium already in the kitchen towels fibres seemed to help it glide but also now served as a drawing tool in its own right. once I had the clouds in place I went about a second layer of tone, now adding darker areas in sweeping movements, trying to get as much kinetic energy in the image as I could. I was hapy with this approach and felt I had a good cloud making method, I repeated the process again and came up with the following image. I really went for a higher contrast this time, I quite liked the result and it certainly has that dark ominous mood I was interested in capturing.
I took my sketch book to the local park, the park has quite wide flat fields and leads off to extensive forests. It is a very cold day with a flat porcelain sky, clouds are not distinguishable but I’m sure they are there, hidden under the barrier of humidity. The light is soft but bright, creating diffused shadows over the flat green areas of grass. The exercise states that I cannot use a rubber, I decided to deny myself temptation of correcting a wayward mark or poorly executed choice and work in ink, I’ve quite enjoyed the feel of papermate’s flexigrip ultra retractable Biro’s in the past so I opened two up and checked they had enough ink to complete the drawings, I took two in case one failed on me. Both pens in fact did end up giving me some issues, I don’t know if it was the cold weather but the roller ball kept getting stuck and needed some scribbling to get the ink flowing.
My first drawing I made very fast marks throwing loose lines all over the page, I wanted to establish a composition, my focal point was to be the tree on the far right as there was a good deal of detail on the trunk, it also had a dead looking tree or bush in front of it, leaving behind a twisted mess of twigs and branches matted and knotted and fixed on the trunk. In the end the focal point was actually the bit that I neglected, I started to focus on the shadow under the trees and the ground. The light was a lot softer than the way I chose to depict it in this image, the pale sky and the humidity diffusing the light would have been easier to depict with a medium with a better range of tone, such as graphite or chalk pastel, I could have used precise hatching to create subtle variations but I didn’t feel his would work with the looser approach I started the drawing with.
I found another bench and found a view, the treeline created a strong horizontal line, the path framed by trees of different colour and shape, the shadows were apparent on the floor, I tried to treat these with a little more subtlety this time, defining the tonal differences with individual lines and only using an outline when I wanted a harder shadow. I liked this view as the trees were all quite different., I tried to take a different approach with each one. I am working quite loose and fast and I’m not too sure if maybe I am taking it a step beyond where I can achieve an acceptable result. I will try to slow it down a little on the next one.
Whilst sitting on the bench I spotted another interesting view, I spun round and looked for a focal point, I thought the tree stump was quite interesting and would break up the textures created by the foliage and the rougher barks on the tree. I started again by adding in some key marks to work out my composition. Working slower now I looked at the darker areas and tried to define and separate the tree trunk from the other objects, I wanted the trunk to have deep and solid sinuous roots but really stand out, I kept the trunk as light as possible while retaining some strong contrast, I also used the fallen branch in the same way hoping it would add a marker to guide the eye towards the bottom of the image.
The final image, I tried to approach with all the observations and lessons learned from the previous drawings, the light and shadow on the grass I approached with hatching. I wanted to show a variety of different shaped trees. I framed the church building with lighter tones, I felt that would be the main focal point. I enjoyed the exercise, despite the technical hitch of the pens not working as well as I’d have liked and the cold weather making it quite unpleasant to work in, making my hands numb and less responsive.
This exercise called for me to draw upon my observations so far, the main thing I have noticed with my landscapes, the focal point is often small, subtle or even non existent. This is likely because I am having to find suitable areas to draw for the exercises rather than having inspiration hitting me and seeing something that would be interesting to draw. For this image, I wanted to draw on some of the things I have enjoyed and found interesting to draw, I hope that will make my efforts more interesting and hopefully even a little dramatic.
I wanted my composition to have some depth, I wanted to portray some receding landscapes, some rolling hills and valleys all under a dramatic sky, much like I saw in Constables works. My main focal point would be a cut/broken tree trunk, as you look past that other things will lead you through. I divided my scene in layers, my focal point up front, this would show the most contrast and detail, as we journey through the drawing, we see a deep forest, this would be less contrasty, but have dark to mid tones, finally the far distance, this would offer the less contrast and me much lighter in value, I only wanted to imply detail here as it would be too far away to carry minute visual information.
I worked to my strength of understanding to the mediums I had been using, Pencil offers me control, and come in a wealth of tones, if I require darker tones and soft edges I can select a pencil that will help with that. Clouds seemed to be well suited to this medium, I can work the graphite into the paper smudge and blend hard edges to soft and get a good degree of control into my marks and gestures.
I really have enjoyed using diluted drawing ink with a brush, the varied brushes offer a wealth of pattern and marks, the fan brush when suitably loaded with diluted ink, starts to clump and lends itself nicely to building dense foliage, it also means I don’t have to work with line, I want my line work saved for the main focal point. For the tree stump, I used a combination of fine liners and diluted ink, this line and wash technique was how I hoped to retain the white of the paper and some nice deep blacks, offering a good range of contrast.
As the title suggests, this exercise is all about establishing a fore, middle and background. I took that very same approach in my previous image, I thought this time I would attempt something that while still covers off the learning in this exercise diverges slightly from the guidelines.
I wanted to try to use the middle ground as the focal point, obscuring the focus from the fore ground to suggest depth, the technical challenge here was trying to recreate the blurred depth of field, like you would get if you was using a camera with a large aperture.
I layed out a horizon with some diluted ink, allowing it to dry and settle in pools, wanted a ground like texture and this seemed to work nicely on other attempts with this medium.
Again I blocked in the tree in the background with a fan brush soaked in diluted ink, I didn’t want this to be to bold and dark, I wanted it to appear distant and misty.
next I worked with a large graphite stick the blurred foreground branches, i worked it into the paper, I didn’t want any had edges or clarity, this was to be a blurred soft focus. It didn’t really work, it lacked structure and fidelity, it wasn’t immediately obvious we was looking through tree branches, I contemplated starting over but wanted to have a think about why it was failing or I was destined to recreate a mistake ion the future.
I squinted and blurred my eyes. looked at photos that used the shallow depth of field technique and decided that i needed to tighten up the shapes, I had distorted them too much. I fetched some white acyrylic paint and thought it would be worth a salvage attempt, even if it was just to experiment. The paint went on and muddied a little, the graphite stick I had used was the water soluble variety, it was not a totally awful result as the moisture in the paint mixed with the graphite it took on a new life.
The final image, isn’t what I quite had in mind, but I wasn’t too opposed to the end result, my attempt to fix the drawing had given it an almost double image or ghosted effect, a little like when you look at something cross eyed.
I felt I had learnt some good lessons from the exercise, even one or too that ended up as a bit of a surprise. I was ready to call the image complete and move on.
I had trouble, thinking of a suitable building I could visit and as we are in lockdown due to covid-19 I opted to draw a stack of books as the exercise suggested. I set up a stack of books and a small chocolate box, I offset a box on top of this. My viewpoint was close to the subject and elevated above, this seemed to skew the squareness of the box.
The vanishing points was indeed quite far off the paper, I do know of a technique to overcome this issue, although I didn’t use it in this example. I felt the exercise went fairly well, a building would have been required a lot more accuracy, and offered more of a challenge, the books can have curved lines and wont look off, where as a buildings structure needs to appear sound or it will look out of place.
I have seen some really nice drawings of buildings that have hand drawn lines, that aren’t straight, the understanding of perspective does seem to be key, even if you mean to distort or exaggerate angles in the final work, I will look to see if I can add some looser hand drawn line work in any upcoming drawings of buildings.
Atmospheric perspective is something I do aim to use in my drawings, I didn’t know what it was called but I understood the technique. I used my pot of diluted ink for this exercise, I knew I could establish some silhouettes and then layer up the ink to convey depth. Adding a light wash over the entire page initially and letting that dry gave me a greyish canvas to work on, i then used some paper masking tape to add the horizon line, i carefully ripped it in half to make a rough edge and added in the ground, once the horizon was established I added in the row of trees, as they approached my viewpoint , I added in some ink that was less diluted, I did give the paper a few once overs with the hair dryer as I wanted some lines o remain hard edged, such as the foliage and ground shadows.
I enjoyed this exercise and was happy with the effect. I will try to recreate this effect with other techniques, I think a good challenge would be a hatching technique, where more careful choices would be needed to ensure the exercises success.
This exercise seemed to be about extracting the most useful information when drawing on site. Due to covid-19 we are currently in an lockdown, I took some photographs and worked from them as a substitute to fieldwork, as I would have drawn faster and loosely I gave myself 10 minutes to complete each drawing. I didn’t want to get bogged down in details and thought after the previous timed exercise this might be a good way to approach. Each view has a linear and a tonal block study, drawn in a 10cm square area. my paper has a fairly rough tooth and this with the addition of using a 3B pencil made the drawings a little muddy and didn’t hold detail too well, as we was asked to work on a small scale I dont think that mattered, capturing the essence, form and shape was more important than accuracy and precision.
