Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Continuous Tones

Winter Afternoon in the Trent Hills
Continuous Tones - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Charcoal on Paper
60.5cm x 45cm (23.5" x 17.55")

Between the lessons on Collage and Erased Drawing in Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler there is a sub section on Continuous Tones - in which Phillip recommends using charcoal to further develop an understanding of tonal range. He suggests using the side of the charcoal to create the darkest areas and then to use the side of the hand or kitchen towels to create mid tones before finally adding more subtle tonal changes.

The section offers some good advice about working with charcoal. I enjoyed this drawing, but I'm not sure charcoal will ever be my favourite medium.

Polished Silver

Silver Necklace
Ink and Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

Polished Silver is the first topic in Metallic Impressions - Chapter 4 of  Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice.

This is one of Elaine's necklaces. The shapes in it are inspired by the carved masonry at Southwell Minster. It is one of the most complicated things I've drawn in a long time. In some places you can see the ghostly outline of a second necklace.  These are my original pencil lines before I adjusted the drawing to improve the accuracy.  The painting doesn't really convey the appearance of polished silver. In retrospect, I should have used paler washes - something to remember for next time.

Direct Watercolour

Amberley War Memorial
Warercolour on Paper
18cm x 12.5cm (7" x 4.75")

30x30DirectWatercolor is an annual event organised by Marc Taro Holmes (Citizen Sketcher). The challenge involves painting 30 watercolour paintings on the 30 days of June.

Direct watercolour implies minimal (or no) under drawing, and working wet-in-wet in a single pass without waiting for layers to dry before continuing.

Brewery Lane
Warercolour on Paper
18cm x 12.5cm (7" x 4.75")

The challenge inspired me to try a few paintings without my usual safety net of a detailed initial drawing. In the spirit of lock-down, I added the constraint of painting local scenes from Google Maps Street View. The results are a bit wonkier than I normally strive for, but better than I anticipated.

All Saints
Warercolour on Paper
18cm x 12.5cm (7" x 4.75")

The painting of the Amberley war memorial was a particular surprise. I expected it to be a disaster because I sweated for ages drawing the perspective of the memorial in St Peter's for Bob and still didn't quite get it right - there might be a lesson for me here.

The Bell
Warercolour on Paper
18cm x 12.5cm (7" x 4.75")

We have just got back from having our Sunday lunch at the Bell. They had all their doors open today, to allow for a one way system as part of their Covid 19 social distancing measures - strange times.