Portland and the Chesil Beach

Bright Sea on a Grey Day - Abbotsbury Hill
23 November 2014
Watercolour on Paper
18cm x 12cm (7" x 5")

The view of Portland and the Chesil Beach from Abbotsbury Hill is one of my favourite scenes. I love the ancient landscape, the strangeness of the Chesil Beach and the Fleet and the graceful curve from Portland into the straightness of the beach.

Portland and the Chesil Beach

I drew these sketches and took the photograph last Sunday on a cold grey morning. I have limited experience of drawing landscapes from life and found this view to be particularly challenging. When I got home, I added some more contrast to the sketch. Next time I will focus more on the tonal differences while I am sketching.

Portland and the Chesil Beach
23 November 2014
Graphite Pencil
Daler Rowney A5 Graduate Sketchbook
210mm x 149mm (8.3" x 5.9")

One of my ambitions it is to become less reliant on painting from photographs. I would rather paint from sketches or from life.

Portland and the Chesil Beach - Gesture Drawing
23 November 2014
Graphite Pencil
Daler Rowney A5 Graduate Sketchbook
210mm x 149mm (8.3" x 5.9")

Practicing Linear Perspective

Bookcases and Birthday Cards
5, 6 and 9 November 2014
Graphite Pencil
Winsor & Newton A4 Heavy Weight Sketch Book
21.0cm x 29.7cm (8.25" x 11.75")

This week it was time to practice some linear perspective.

The evenings are too dark (and cold and wet) to look for a suitable subject outside, so I fell back on the old favourite - a corner of a room.

The last time I tried this type of scene was almost exactly a year ago (see Keys to Drawing - Chapter 5).

The perspective on the bookshelves was more complex than I anticipated. It was tempting to use one-point perspective, but making the shelves believable relies on two-point perspective. You have to see the tops of some shelves and the bottom of others, so there is no escaping two-point perspective. Both the vanishing points are off the page and it was a challenge to make the numerous parallel lines look as though they are converging to the same place.

My goal was to make the perspective sufficiently accurate so an not to offend the eye without resorting to a ruler and without making the drawing look too much like an exercise in linear perspective - even though it was.

October Sketches

Rosebuds
30 October 2014
Watercolour on Paper
12cm x 18cm (5" x 7")

These are my favourite sketches from October.

The sketch at the top of the page was inspired by a post called Poor Man's Impressionism by Nathan Fowkes.

Rosehip
5 October 2014
Watercolour on Paper
18cm x 12cm (7" x 5")

I foraged the rosehip on a Sunday morning walk with Elaine. The beginning of October seems a long time ago - the weather is much damper now and there are lots of wet leaves on the ground.

On the Sofa
27 October 2014
Graphite Pencil
Winsor & Newton A4 Heavy Weight Sketch Book
29.7cm x 21.0cm (11.75" x 8.25")

This last sketch is of one of Elaine’s favourite poses for me to draw. It is one of the few poses that is comfortable for 30 minutes and she can watch TV while I am scribbling. We used a similar pose for some of the exercises in Keys to Drawing - Chapter 3.