Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Drawing Games

Jackdaw
Drawing Games - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Water-Soluble Graphite on Paper
39.5m x 56.5cm (15.5" x 22.25")

There didn’t seem to be any instructions for Lesson 22 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler. The spirit of the lesson is experimentation with a suggestion to use different techniques and media to reveal the different textures and layers in the landscape – which resonates with one of the lessons from Liz Steel’s SketchingNow – Edges class.

The seemed like an extension to the Making a Mess lesson (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Making a Mess). I ended up playing only two different games, but I played each multiple times and they both took me away from my normal approach to drawing.

For this first set of drawings, I used the water-soluble graphite block (ArtGraf Tailor Shape) I enjoyed so much in the Making a Mess lesson. 

The Mouth of the Dart
Drawing Games - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Water-Soluble Graphite on Paper
39.5m x 56.5cm (15.5" x 22.25")

Using the water-soluble graphite is like a mixture of drawing and watercolour painting. In this drawing of the mouth of the Dart, I used different marks to convey the different layers in the landscape. The sky is horizontal marks and horizontal brushstrokes. The sea is vertical marks and vertical brushstrokes. The background hills are two layers of light swirling marks and swirling brushstrokes. The middle ground is more of the same but with more graphite and some Conté crayon marks. The foreground is much darker marks with a lot of additional Conté crayon marks.

The second set of drawings are quite different, so I will post them in a second post.

Granite

The Atlantic
Watercolour on Paper
26cm x 18cm (10" x 7")

 I love the granite coastlines of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. This picture is based on a few different photos of waves crashing on their rocky shorelines. It is a response to the Granite topic in the Earth Textures chapter of Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice.

I drew several thumbnails to work out the composition before starting the picture, but I still had to make things up as I painted. Responding to a developing painting can be a good thing, but in this case the result is less dynamic than I intended. I will have to try again. Elaine, Doris and I will be returning to Cornwall after the lockdowns are lifted, so I will use the opportunity to gather more inspiration.

Dots and Lines

Across the Fields to the Old Mill on Kneeton Road
Dots and Lines - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink on Paper
11.5cm x 15cm (4.5" x 6")

Lesson 21 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about Dots and Lines. Philip asks:

How would you draw the landscape using only horizontal lines, or vertical points? What if you combined both or introduced diagonals or curves? This drawing exercise does just this, reducing the landscape down to some basic elements.

I tried a few drawings using just dots and horizontal lines. They look like Phillip's simplest examples and do not contain enough information to convey a sense of place or atmosphere.

Vineyard - Niagara on the Lake
Dots and Lines - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink on Paper
15cm x 10.5cm (6" x 4.25")

Phillip also includes examples with a wider variety of marks. He seems to identify the major lines in the landscape and use smaller repeating marks to create details and texture.

The pictures on this post are more like quick gesture drawings of a scene. I plan to try a few more and give more attention to the quality of my mark making.

Boats in Front of Smeaton's Pier
Dots and Lines - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink on Paper
13cm x 10cm (5" x 4")