Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Oil Painting

Sunflowers
Acrylic on Paper
23cm x 14.5cm (9" x 5.75")

Spoiler - This isn’t an oil painting or a landscape. 

Lesson 38 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about oil painting. Philip provides a beginner’s guide to oils and suggests a materials list.

I am wary of using oil paints because of the toxic fumes from their traditional solvents. Research reveals a lot of conflicting opinions about the practicality of non toxic oil painting. In the end, I went with my gut instinct, which is to paint in acrylics, but to try to create paintings that look like oil paintings. I am planning to use acrylics for the remaining lessons in Chapter 7.

In this painting, I'm trying to emulate the alla prima approach from Carol Marine's her book Daily Painting.

Things didn't go to plan and I had improvise, but the painting is not a total disaster. It was a great learning experience and I'm looking forward to the next one. Lesson 39 is Alla Prima painting, so I'm going to find a simple landscape to paint. 

You can finds a playlist of 4 videos about this painting on my YouTube channel (My First Acrylic Painting). 

Distant and Background Trees

Background Trees - Claudia Nice
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
11cm x 9cm (4.5" x 3.5")

Distant and Background Trees are the sixth and seventh topic in the Tree Techniques chapter of Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice. It’s a few months since I’ve picked up Claudia’s book. An exercise from Liz Steel’s SketchingNow Watercolour on Location course inspired me to return. By chance, I’ve picked it up at almost the same point as I left off.

In an exercise about common landscape elements, Liz suggests studying how other artists paint and draw the subject. The first topic on the list is trees, providing the perfect opportunity to revisit Claudia's book.

Distant Trees - Claudia Nice
Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
15cm x 14cm (6" x 5.5")

I made some notes about Claudia’s treatment of distant and background trees and tried to copy a couple of her examples. 

Middle Distance Trees - John Lovett
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14cm x 11cm (5.5" x 4.5")

I also looked at advice from John Lovett. I studied his suggestions about trees in Textures, Techniques & Special Effects for Watercolor and Getting Started and tried to copy some of his examples.

Tree - John Lovett
Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
15cm x 14cm (6" x 5.5")

I’m pleased to get back to Claudia’s book and intend to continue learning from her content.

SketchingNow – Edges

 

Cakes – Hard v Soft Edges
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

In March, I joined a group run through of Liz Steel's SketchingNow Edges course. I then fractured my shoulder and couldn't sketch for over a month, so I finished way behind the rest of the group. 

Woodchester Park Boathouse
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

(If you watch The Crown, you may recognize this building as the Gordonstoun school changing rooms.)

The Edges course is about creating depth and interest in your sketches by developing an understanding of edges. This involves recognizing whether the edges you see are a change in plane or just a change in colour and whether the edges are hard or soft or strong or weak. Once you understand the edges you are seeing, you can then decide how to represent them and manipulate them to make your sketches more exciting. There are four lessons each with an indoor and outdoor exercise.

Fruit Bowl
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

I’ve done the course before in 2018 (see SketchingNow Edges), but I've learned a lot more this time through. 

Local Larder
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

As a next step I've joined a group run through of Liz's SketchingNow Watercolour on Location course  which started on the 19th of June, but I'm already behind and rushing to catch up because of recovering from this injured shoulder.

Dresser
Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
20.3 x 14cm cm (8.0" x 5.5")

You can see a few more sketches in a video on my YouTube channel SketchingNow Edges - What Have I Learnt?

A New Watercolour Palette for Sketching

New Palette
Ink and Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
18cm x 18cm (7" x 7")

This is my new watercolour palette. The sketch is in the style of the colour charts Liz Steel does of her palettes (see CURRENT PALETTE – JAN 2020 by Liz Steel).

I needed a new palette because I’ve been using the lack of a suitable palette as an excuse for not sketching outdoors. I'm following Liz Steel's SketchingNow courses, so I've decided to try a palette more like hers. The colour selection is a mixture of paints I use in my main palette and paints Liz uses in her courses - like Potter Pink and Monte Amiata Natural Sienna.

Ready To Go

I've filled only one side of the pans because I'm trying a simplified version of ramp filling - which is explained in this blog post (The advantages of only partially filling watercolour pans from tubes by Jane Blundell). The idea of ramp filling is instead of having to jab into the paint and damaging the point of your brush, you can just swipe across.

There is a video with more details about setting up the pallet on my YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/7UqQuG_4VyY).

SketchingNow – Watercolour

 

River Arrow
Watercolour and Ink
Moleskine A4 Watercolour Album

Since January, I’ve been participating in a Live Version of Liz Steel’s SketchingNow Watercolour course.  I've taken the course previously in 2019. You can see some of my sketches from then in these posts:

• SketchingNow Watercolor (Lessons 1 to 2)
• SketchingNow Watercolor (Lessons 3 to 4)

House Plant
Watercolour and Ink
Moleskine A4 Watercolour Album

Liz doesn't teach a traditional approach to watercolor. She uses it in a quicker and more spontaneous way, which lends itself to sketching on location. The course is structured so you can work through it at your own pace, but this year she ran a live version in which you work through the lessons with a group and Liz hosts a weekly live stream. 

Vegetables
Watercolour and Ink
Moleskine A4 Watercolour Album

Working through the course with a group has been motivating and adds an extra bit of encouragement to do the exercises. Seeing other people's work and hearing about what they've learned and found challenging is also helpful. 

Butcher Hill’s Lane
Watercolour and Ink
Moleskine A4 Watercolour Album

I'm building up some sketching momentum and this has encouraged me to join a group run through of Liz's Edges course which starts in mid-March. This is in preparation for her Watercolor on Location course which starts in June.

Still Life
Watercolour and Ink
Moleskine A4 Watercolour Album

I am studying Ian Roberts' YouTube videos (Ian Roberts Mastering Composition) in parallel to working on Liz's exercises. Most of these sketches have been influenced by his teaching on composition and shadows.

You can see a few more sketches and hear a bit more about my experiences with the course and my plans to develop my sketching skills on my YouTube channel SketchingNow Watercolour - What Have I Learnt?.

Sketching From Nature

Lump of Moss
Ink and Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

Since October 2023, I've been reading a section of the Curious Nature Guide by Clare Walker Leslie each week and using it as the inspiration for a sketching exercise. 

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

Using a prompt for what to sketch is helpful for a couple of reasons: 

• It cuts down the time I need to procrastinate about what to draw.
• It encourages me to try subjects I might not have otherwise chosen.

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

The sketches have been of varying quality, but the results aren't that important. What matters is the time I've spent drawing and intently studying a subject. The pictures on this post are my favourites. You can see all 13 sketches on my YouTube channel (Sketching From Nature – Getting Started).

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

My motivation for drawing at least one sketch from life a week is to make sure I keep training my hand eye coordination and the skills to accurately draw a subject. I want sketching from nature to be a reason to get outside and explore. I would like to become more knowledgeable and to develop a joyful appreciation of my environment. I'm keen to visually document my feelings about a place; the mood, the atmosphere and other things that a camera doesn't always capture. The sketches can then be a source of inspiration and reference material for paintings.

Branches

 

Woodchester Beech
Watercolour on Paper
24.5cm x 15.5cm (9.75" x 6")

Branches is the fourth topic in the Tree Techniques chapter of Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice.

This post has been a long time coming. The topics in this chapter are continuing to be challenging and educational. I made a few false starts on this subject trying to paint winter trees in sunsets. I’ve also been distracted by my new YouTube channel - Mark Bateman Art.

There are two videos about this painting: 

• Creating a Blurred Soft-Focus Background in Watercolour 
• Painting a Textured 3-Dimensional Tree in Watercolour

The blurred soft-focused background is painted with the same technique I used in the post about painting A Fuzzy Background.

I gave the tree some form with a modelling wash (mostly light grey with some dark in the shadows) and then slowly built up the shape and texture in layers using drybrush.

The finishing touch was to add some foreground leaves in gouache.

Hopefully, creating videos will become less time consuming and I will be able to get back to drawing and painting.