Seeing Values
Values play a dominant role in the harmony and design of your composition. A large, dark area in the foreground can be balanced by a properly placed, small, dark area in the distance. Value contrasts can create your center of interest simply by having a light area surrounded by a dark area, or vice versa. Seeing values correctly will help you to interpret the atmosphere and the colors of nature the greens and blues, etc. into black, grays and white in order to render a believable drawing in...
Blending With Stomps And Tortillions
These cigar-shaped blending tools are great to work with. I have salvaged quite a few drawings with their help. The drawings on these two pages demonstrate some of the numerous ways to work with stomps and tortillions. The drawing at top was executed mostly with a chamois stomp. I put some charcoal powder on a separate piece of paper I save the powder from charcoal pencil sharpenings , then rolled part of the point of the stomp in the powder, and rubbed it lightly on a piece of scrap paper so...
Stratocumulus
Stratocumulus clouds cruise in the lower atmosphere. These globular masses or rolls of clouds are layered one over the other. They resemble chunks of soft cotton but are gray with dark bottoms. The clouds may be arranged in groups, lines or wave-like masses the layers may be thick or thin. A thick layer will be made up of rolls of large, dark clouds or rounded masses that resemble waves. After trying numerous thumbnails, this is the composition that I developed. I used a 6B pencil for the cloud...
Foreground Middle Ground Background
In the previous pages, we have discussed seeing values and translating values from nature to your drawing. Now I would like to introduce you to the three Gs foreground, middle ground and background. Most landscapes have all of these in their composition, and they may vary in any imaginable combination. In the examples below, the hay bales and grass are the foreground, the trees and mountain are the middle ground, and the sky is the background. Look them over and see if you can pick out the...
Birches
Birches, to me, have always seemed to be the elegant ladies of the forest. When depicting birch trees, keep that in mind and use a light hand, especially with silver or paper birch trees. The paper birch, sometimes called the canoe birch, grows much heavier than the silver birch and always seems to be shedding its bark. The bark is very durable You might find a birch with the insides completely rotted out and the bark in perfect shape. Another feature that appeals to artists is the black spots,...
Barns Grass Rocks and Water 1
At one time or another, you will wish to include other elements such as barns, grass, rocks or water in your landscape drawings. It's not enough just to have them in your picture, but careful consideration should be given to whether one will be the center of interest or a supporting character. Therefore, a knowledge of their construction and characteristics is important for drawing successful landscapes. Of the many things on the endangered species list, barns must be near the top. The next...
Drawing A Tree Without Foliage
Walking in a woods or forest during late fall and winter is a treat because it allows you to study the trees without their foliage. It is like being in a life drawing class all these wonderful shapes just waiting for your sketchbook. Start by noticing the overall shape, both up close and from a distance. Notice how branches grow from the trunk and how they taper and get thinner toward the ends. Each new growth is in unison unless it has been disturbed by any number of elements. Each tree is a...
Boughs Limbs And Foreshortening
As a tree grows, it sends out boughs, branches and smaller growth that diminish in width as they grow. Therefore, when you sketch a bough coming from a trunk, remember not to make it the same thickness as the trunk. The same principle applies to branches from boughs and to smaller growth, like twigs, from branches. In the bottom drawing, you see a branch that appears to grow from the tree toward you. This is called foreshortening. You can create the illusion of foreshortening by making the...
Drawing Rocks In Water
Drawing rocks in still or calm water gives you the opportunity to practice composing a picture that tells a story with values and shapes and a minimum of detail. These two drawings are good examples of how to say more with less. The charcoal drawing on the right was started and finished with one pencil, a 4B charcoal pencil, on a piece of folio paper. This paper has a distinct texture, which helped me achieve the feeling of rippling water I wanted to portray. I wanted to capture the time of day...
Papers
I once read about an artist who, before starting to work, would find himself running his hand over the sheet of paper in a sort of caress, marveling at the beauty of this piece of paper. At first I thought it was the author embellishing the story, but one day, sitting out in the field about to start a drawing, I found myself running my hand over the surface of my paper. Now I am not saying you should run your hand over every piece of paper you are about to work on. What I am saying is that you...
Simple Perspective
Using perspective in landscape drawing can be perplexing and challenging, but perspective is one of those important elements of picture-making that makes your picture believable. Here, we will talk about simple one- and two-point perspective. Where your eye meets the horizon is called the eye level or horizon line. That imaginary line is a straight, horizontal line. The horizon line will naturally change as you lower or elevate your viewpoint. If you elevate your view point, you will be looking...
Grass Around Buildings
Grass and weeds that grow around barns are different from the growth under trees. Here there are more weeds, probably from the seeds in the hay. To capture this unkempt, weedy look, begin as you did the previous grass drawing. After drawing the barn boards, take an HB pencil and add your mixture of grass and weeds. Keep your strokes more irregular than before, with some strokes much lighter than others, and some bending and curving to the left and right. You are creating mayhem, not uniformity....