I was keen to continue with developing the sketches from my back garden, in particular the one I have developed in the composition exercise. However, in the course guide it is suggested that only wide open landscape can be used for this exercise, stating also that it is essential to include sky in the image. I have therefore looked back to previous photos taken whilst holidaying and chose the photograph below.
I decided to start with pastel pencils for this exercise, I felt this would help to create the soft muted background more easily.
I started by drawing the sky and then built the image from background to fore. I found it harder than I expected to do this exercise. I had assumed that because it was easy to identify the differences just by looking at the landscape which had also been captured clearly in the photograph, that this would therefore be easy to translate to the drawing. I had an idea that it would simply be a matter of overlaying blue grey layers, with the background being lightest and that I could simply use other medium such as pencil and coloured pen to increase detail in the foreground.
It was not so easy to do this, but what I also found was that it was most difficult to maintain some sense of form whilst holding back on detail for the middle and foreground. What I did eventually was to just keep working in layers; first creating tone and then smudging and and then repeating until I was happy. I also used fixative a few times so that I was then able to gently colour over with a blue pastel. Whilst working tonaly I also tried to shade according to the shape of the landscape, so in curves and upward movements which I do think was effective in giving form to the hills.
I used coloured pencils and pens to make the detail more fine in the foreground, but also found that intensifying the colour helped to bring the foreground forward and therefore create more depth.
When I thought I had finished I realised that the sky was lacking depth and perspective so I worked on this some more to try and add more of a sense of distance in a similar way to the landscape. I found this the hardest aspect of the drawing. It is very difficult to prevent the sky looking as if it is like a wall going upwards rather than being above and beyond towards the horizon.
I’m happy with the outcome of the ground, but feel the sky is my weak point and this is something I can only get better at with practice. There is always room for improvement and development. If I were to do the whole thing again I think I would experiment first with different medium for ways to get the distinctions in tone between the different areas. I’m also keen to practice this exercise with the image I worked on in the previous exercise, I am considering using that for my assignment 3 and I think this exercise would help in the development stages.
Below is the final outcome.
Deborah McAulay 