Sunday 27 June 2021

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Blind Touch Drawing

High Wood on a Sunny Day
Ink on Paper
28cm x 38cm (11" x 15")


Lesson 25 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is the midpoint of the book - a course of 50 lessons. 

Across the Valley
Ink on Paper
38cm x 28cm (15" x 11")

The lesson takes the Blind Drawing exercise from lesson 3 (Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Blind Drawing) one step further.

Stroking a Christmas Tree
Blind Touch Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape

Charcoal on Paper
22.5cm x 30cm (8.5" x 12")

In Lesson 3, you look at the subject (not the paper) while you are drawing. In the first part of lesson 25, you draw with your eyes closed. You close your eyes, touch the subject and draw what you feel, hear, smell or otherwise experience.

Bird Song and the A46 in the Distance
Blind Touch Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscap
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Charcoal on Paper
22.5cm x 30cm (8.5" x 12")

The first part of the lesson also includes an exercise to look at the landscape for 5 minutes and then draw it with your eyes shut, trying to picture the scene and using your experiences in the landscape to create an image that evokes being there.  

Across the Valley
Blind Touch Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape

Charcoal on Paper
30cm x 22.5cm (12" x 8.5")

The second part of the lesson is an exercise to make a series of drawings from the blind drawings “thinking about extending your mark making”. I interpreted this to mean create drawings that evoke being in the landscape using the type of marks that appear in the eyes closed exercises.

Sunday 13 June 2021

Adobe and Brick

 

Its Always Sunny
Watercolour and Charcoal on Paper
16.5cm x 22.5cm (6.5" x 8.75")

It’s always sunny in Kingswear. Whenever Elaine and I visit, we inevitably end up enjoying a drink on the Ship Inn’s patio after a long walk in the blistering sunshine. The Kingswear Hall is the other side of the road and the blue sky on a sunny day is the perfect back drop for its brickwork.

This picture was inspired by the Adobe and Brick topic in Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice and those summer evenings at the Ship Inn.

As well as taking Claudia’s advice I also revisited John Lovett’s guidance  about brickwork from his book Textures, Techniques and Special Effects for Watercolor – which is now out of print, but there is plenty of good training material on his website.