Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Underpainting

Downham Hill (Smallpox Hill) from Uley Bury
Underpainting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Acrylic on MDF
20cm x 40cm (7.75" x 17.75")

Lesson 38 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler introduces underpainting as a technique used by historical painters. They would create a monochromatic painting using cheap quick drying pigments to establish the composition and major tonal values. They would then glaze this with more expensive pigments introducing colour and more subtle tonal shifts. He points out that monochromatic underpainting provides another opportunity to work with a new medium without having to deal with the complexity of colour.

I created this underpainting with a 10-year-old, unopened tube of a cheap Payne’s Grey acrylic. I also glazed it with 10-year-old acrylics. These were better quality, but also unopened. 

Underpainting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Acrylic on MDF
20cm x 40cm (7.75" x 17.75")

This is the most ambitious painting I’ve tried in acrylics. One of the biggest challenges was that some colours barely tinted the underpainting, while others completely obscured it. I should have expected this because the transparency/opacity of different pigments is an important factor in watercolour, but it still blindsided me when the same thing became important for acrylic glazes. It is only when I wrote this post that I compared the two versions of the picture. Each change of tone in the underpainting is still visible in the glazed version - even when I thought the underpainting was completely obliterated, it still has an impact on the final painting - lesson learnt.

Philip suggests experimenting with different underpainting colours, but one is enough for me (for the time being). This exercise has opened my eyes to acrylics. I’m excited to paint some more, but this style of underpainting is not top of my list of techniques to explore.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Masking

Dart Moorings
Watercolour on Paper
15.5cm x 23.5cm (6" x 9.25")

Lesson 36 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler starts with a discussion of masking and then introduces a number of other watercolour topics.

Masking is the technique of using a fluid (rubber solution) or tape to preserve the white of the paper. You could just carefully paint around the white areas, but masking them makes life easier. I wrote about this approach recently (see A Fuzzy Background).

Some people never use masking because it can cause problems. Most notably, the edges created by masking can appear too hard and prominent. Masking fluid is also notorious for wrecking brushes. You have to use an old brush and protect the bristles by covering them in soap; which can make it difficult to apply the masking fluid accurately. It can also tear the paper if you leave it too long before removing it.

In honour of this lesson, I bought a fine tipped masking fluid applicator (Jackson's Masking Fluid Applicator) to mask the boats in this painting. It was the least stressful masking fluid experience I can remember.

A monochrome study of this scene in which the horizon was much lower (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Monochrome Study) made me suspect the composition would work better with more water and less sky.

Dart Moorings -  Thumbnail Sketch - 6.5cm x 10cm (2.5" x 4")
Pencil on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

A thumbnail helped to confirm this before committing to paint.

Polperro Cottages

Polperro Cottages
Watercolour on Paper
15.5cm x 23.5cm (6" x 9.25")

Last summer, Elaine, Doris and I spent a few days in Talland Bay, Cornwall to celebrate my birthday. It's a short walk along the costal path to Polperro in one direction and Looe in the other.

We all enjoyed the walk to and from Polperro, but our walk to Looe was less successful. It was a scorching hot day and Doris insisted on a taxi ride home (see Holiday Sketches).

Polperro is photogenic, but my photos didn't capture exactly what I wanted to paint. Some 7cm x 10cm thumbnails helped to explore and improve a composition. The initial pencil thumbnail was useful for deciding on the placement and configuration of shapes. It would have been handy if it had also given a definitive statement about dark, light and mid-toned shapes (see John Lovett - Thumbnail Sketches). I will include a 3 value tonal study when I next use thumbnails.

Polperro Cottages  – 7cm x 10cm (2.75" x 4") Thumbnail Sketches
Pencil and Watercolour on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

The painting respects the spirit of the thumbnails except for the colour of the water. I prefer the turquoise in the second thumbnail, but if I try to adjust the painting, there is a chance I will spoil the reflections, so I will stick with what I have.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Monochrome Study

Moorings on the Dart
Monochrome Study - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Watercolour on Paper
16.5cm x 24cm (6.5" x 9.5")

Chapter 7 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about painting. Philip provides an introduction to a variety of media and techniques. The first is watercolour which he suggests is a big mistake for beginners because:

Watercolour is the most difficult painting medium to use well as it is unforgiving, allowing you little room for error.

He also points out:

It is a good idea to create a crisp linear drawing to establish the placement of the key elements of the landscape. 

This advice made me realise I’ve let my drawing practice slip and I need to do something about it.

Lesson 35 is a monochrome study in watercolour. Phillip recommends monochromes as a way to get started with watercolour while avoiding the additional complexity of having to think about colour.

The exercise is similar to Lesson 18 Wash Media, but in watercolour instead of ink. It provided an opportunity to experiment with the composition and approach for two pictures I am planning to paint. In both of them, I overdid the masking fluid and applied it too clumsily – lesson learnt.

The study of the boats on the Dart helped me to work out how to build up the layers of the landscape and how to paint the distant background..

Tree Tunnel - Westonbirt
Monochrome Study - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Watercolour on Paper
16.5cm x 24cm (6.5" x 9.5")

I wasn’t sure the tree tunnel would work without a lot of painstaking detail. The monochrome has persuaded me it will

Thumbnail Sketches

Aged Fencing - Preliminary Thumbnail Sketch - 15cm x 10cm (6" x 4")
Ink and Pencil on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

Many art teachers and authors stress the importance of using quick thumbnail sketches to check and improve a composition before investing too much time and material in a painting that is doomed to fail – (see John Lovett - Thumbnail Sketches).

I used this approach recently while preparing for the Aged Fencing topic in Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice.

Over the summer, I collected a load of reference photos while out walking with Elaine and Doris. 

Aged Fencing

This stile has the makings of an interesting subject, but the composition can probably be improved. I drew a couple of simple thumbnails to explore some ideas using a rectangle with the same proportion as the paper I will paint on. 

Aged Fencing - Preliminary Thumbnail Sketch - 7.5cm x 5cm (3" x 2")
Ink on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

Thumbnail sketches are also a good way to find the challenges in the drawing. These highlighted the importance of perspective on the step. If the step is out of whack, it upsets the whole picture.

I drew the slightly larger version at the top of the page to finalize the composition and to think about the tones in the picture. I will do a couple of simple colour studies before starting to paint.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Format

Composition for Parkmill Pond (1:2)

Lesson 34 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is a the last lesson in the chapter on Composition. Phillip starts by pointing out:

Changing the format of your image can have a profound impact on your work.

He urges:

Don’t fall into the trap of complacency, stretch yourself, challenge how you approach the composition of the landscape.

He goes on to suggest a number of ways to train your compositional muscles, but doesn’t suggest a specific exercise. One of his first suggestions is to cut up an image so you can see all the positive and negative shapes because:

Often, good composition is a way of ensuring that each shape in your image is interesting and different, yet their overall effect is to create harmony through the opposition of different forces.

As an exercise I decided to break a photo into shapes and use them as the basis for a composition.

Parkmill Pond, Woodchester Park

This is Parkmill Pond in Woodchester Park.

Parkmill Pond (17 Shapes)

My first attempt at identifying shapes, resulted in 17 shapes. The frilly foreground overlaps the objects behind it, dividing them into multiple small shapes. This is too many - Tom Hoffman suggests a maximum of 10 shapes in the Five-Value Monochrome Study from his Watercolor-Painting. 

Parkmill Pond (10 Shapes)

Simplifying the foreground shape, reduces the overall shape count to 10. I plan to paint the foreground grasses overlapping the water, but these are adornments. The "bulk" of the foreground shape is the simpler object in this second picture.

Parkmill Pond - Separating the Shapes

Separating the shapes shows they are interesting and varied, but they are predominately horizontal - they don't provide any contrast between horizontal and vertical. My plan is this tension will come from the rendering of the shapes. There will be lots of vertical lines to suggest the textures in the grasses, trees and reflections.

After identifying the shapes, the next step was to answer two compositional questions:

• What format to use for the picture?
• What is the focus / centre of interest?

Towards the end of the lesson, Phillip suggests:

By limiting yourself, maybe to a particular format or a particular use of media, you can begin to clarify your intention, to know what you want to say.

My initial format choice was 7 by 10 because I paint in water-based media (watercolour, acrylic and gouache) and I have two Arches watercolour blocks (a small and a large one) both with proportions of 7 by 10.

What is the centre of interest? There is a tower (“The Tower”) tucked away in the background trees, but this is a painting about the lake, so the patch of bright water towards the rear of the lake makes a good focal point.

I investigated a number of ways to resize the image to 7 by 10:

• Just squashing it all in
• Various zooms and crops

I also explored the position of the bright patch of water using a rule of thirds grid and a phi grid (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Rule of Thirds)

Composition for Parkmill Pond (7:10)

After a bit of tinkering, this is the result. I prefer the 1 by 2 version at the top of the post. There are some landscapes, probably those with mainly horizontal shapes, that I think look better in a more panoramic format. I've decided to limit myself to 3 formats for watercolour paintings: 7:10, 1:1 and 1:2. I chose 1:1 and 1:2 because they are simple to measure and they seem to work well for some subjects (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Root Rectangles).

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Compositional Principles

Farm Cottages - Latest Thumbnail - 7cm x 10cm (2.75" x 4")
Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink and Watercolour on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

The bulk of Lesson 33 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is a review of John Ruskin’s 9 laws of composition from The Elements of Drawing:

• Principality
• Repetition
• Continuity
• Curvature
• Radiation
• Contrast
• Interchange
• Consistency
• Harmony

Phillip sneaks in a couple of extras. Stillness might be accepted unchallenged, but Photo Manipulation isn’t getting on to a list published in 1857.

The exercise for the lesson involves taking as many different photos of a subject as possible and then making a series of compositional studies. 

I selected some local cottages and took a load of photos. My initial experiments concerned the placement of the major horizontal divisions. I tried a few different arrangements before settling on the first one; which is often the way. The next step was a small thumbnail to explore where the buildings fitted into this schema and some initial ideas about tone. 

Farm Cottages - Initial Thumbnails - Each 3.5cm x 5cm (1.5" x 2")
Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

Then I moved on to slightly bigger thumbnails to investigate the drawing, tones and colours. 

Farm Cottages - Thumbnails - Each 7cm x 10cm (2.75" x 4")
Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink, Watercolour and Graphite on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

These studies didn't enthuse me, so I tried a few more small drawings to find a less central placement for the buildings.

Farm Cottages - Off-centre Thumbnails - Each 3.5cm x 5cm (1.5" x 2")
Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

The drawing at the top of the post investigates colour and tone for the repositioned buildings. I also plan to create some texture in the foreground and add some small flashes of bold colour in the focal point amongst the buildings.

Adding Colour to Monochrome Studies

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

I've been adding colour to the monochrome studies I drew in the lessons about Tonal Drawing and Mark Making from Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler. This is part of a plan to develop my watercolour skills by painting more regularly.

This is my favourite so far. It is the drawing of High Wood from the post Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Blind Touch Drawing.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Texture and Space

West Bay Harbour
Texture and Space - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink on Paper
14cm x 19cm (5.5" x 7.5")

Lesson 27 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about Texture and Space. It expands on the theme from previous lessons about using different marks to describe textures. It also explores how varying the level of detail though a scene can create a feeling of space and a focus for the picture.

Bradgate Park
Texture and Space - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Charcoal on Paper
14cm x 19cm (5.5" x 7.5")

Philip observes the closer something is, the more detail and texture we can see. By using simple uniform marks in the background and increasingly distinctive marks as we move into the foreground, we create the illusion of space.

Brecon Barn
Texture and Space - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Watercolour and Ink on Paper
16.5cm x 21.5cm (6.5" x 8.5")

He points out that if everything in a scene is treated with the same level of detail, the image lacks visual contrast and depth. He discusses simplifying the landscape and using detail to draw the eye to particular parts of the picture.

Brecon Barn (Too Much Detail)
Texture and Space - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Watercolour and Ink on Paper
16.5cm x 21.5cm (6.5" x 8.5")

In the last picture I experimented with this idea by drawing everything with the same level of detail. It's a challenge to spend time on something and to deliberately spoil it, but it provides an important lesson about learning when to stop.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Reinventing

 

Sketchbook Ferns (1)
Ink and Charcoal on Paper
20cm x 25cm (8" x 10")

Lesson 26 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is called Reinventing. It contains an exercise to take close up photographs of textures you find in the landscape and to experiment with creating the essence of the texture by scribbling in your sketchbook.

Sketchbook Ferns (2)
Ink, Watercolour Marker and Charcoal on Paper
21.5cm x 29cm (8.5" x 11.5")

I experimented with some photos of ferns I took in the garden of the Egypt Mill. I’m not sure how much I learnt about drawing, but I learnt a lot about the structure of ferns. This is an exercise I intend to return to again - thinking about the texture of larger surfaces such as fields and buildings.

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 Landscape
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.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Brush Drawing

Parkmill Pond
Brush Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Indian Ink on Paper
26cm x 20cm (10.25" x 8")

Lesson 23 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about drawing with a brush. Philip points out

Whilst one tends to think about the brush as a painting tool, Cozens, Turner and Rubens all used ink to make tonal brush drawings of landscape. You are dealing with transparency and opacity, and depending on the medium, soluble or waterproof materials.

Mousehole Harbour
Brush Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Indian Ink on Paper
25.5cm x 18cm (10" x 7")

The lesson doesn't have a clearly defined exercise, but the spirit is captured by two sentences:

By working with a single colour and investigating the potential of each implement, looking at configuration and permutation, you will build up an understanding of each implement's potential.

Experiment with combining and opposing different qualities of mark and media to describe both the texture and tone of the objects and spaces in the landscape, as well as enhance your drawings, creating both space and dynamic tension.

I worked with Indian ink and a variety of brushes including the tatty old decorating brush favoured by John Lovett.

The results are reminiscent of my drawings from lesson 18 (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Wash Media). This isn't a surprise because, basically I've repeated the exercise, but with more focus on mark making.

Woodchester Park
Brush Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Indian Ink on Paper
22cm x 15.5cm (8.75" x 6.25")

The lesson clarifies my desire to improve the quality of the individual marks I make. The chapter on Mark Making provides a framework for continual thought and practice, rather than exercises for to do once and forget about.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Drawing Games (Part 2)

 

Woodchester Park Boathouse
Drawing Games - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Charcoal Pencil on Paper
30.5cm x 21.5cm (12" x 8.5")

This is the second instalment of my drawings from Lesson 22 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler..

The “game” for these drawings was inspired by a lesson from John Lovett about Drawing, Sketching and Scribbling. 

For this game, I used a charcoal pencil - a medium I do not normally use. I held the pencil further back from the point than usual and as though I had just picked it up from the desk - rather than using the normal tripod writing grip. These changes allow you to make more fluid marks by drawing from the shoulder instead of the wrist and to easily switch between using the very tip of the pencil and the side of the lead. The new grip initially felt clumsy, but John’s premise is that confidence and conviction are more important than accuracy.

One of the most important aspects of drawing is confidence. Make your marks with conviction and don't be too concerned with accuracy. It is much better to have a clean, confident mark in the wrong place than a timid, overworked line in the right place.

The picture at the top of the post is the boathouse in Woodchester park. I think it featured in some episodes of the Crown as the boathouse at Gordonstoun, but I can’t say for sure.

Winery Barns
Drawing Games - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Charcoal Pencil on Paper
30.5cm x 21.5cm (12" x 8.5")

These are some barns at one of the wineries in Niagara on the Lake. I think it was Iniskillin, but I took the photo in 2011, so I can’t be sure about this either.

Digger Graveyard
Drawing Games - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Charcoal Pencil on Paper
30.5cm x 21.5cm (12" x 8.5")

There is a digger graveyard in our local woods. These are the two latest arrivals. They seem much younger than the other residents. I was hoping they were just on holiday, but things were looking bleak because they hadn’t moved for weeks. Even Doris seemed worried about them. They just sat there slowly seizing up and rusting. Until yesterday. They’ve started to do some digging and it looks like they are trying to tidy the place up a bit. Happy Days.

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.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Wash Media

 

The Severn Estuary from Selsley Common
Wash Media - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Indian Ink on Paper
16.5cm x 13.5cm (6.5" x 5.25")

Lesson 18 ("Wash Media") is the last lesson in the chapter about “Tonal Drawing” in Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler. In this lesson, Philip discusses a variety of inks and alternative media that can be used for drawing lines and applied as washes.

Coastguard Cottages - Worth Matravars
Wash Media - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Indian Ink on Paper
18.5cm x 13.5cm (7.25" x 5.5")

The sketches on this post are all drawn with Indian ink which is waterproof when dry – this allows layers of tone to be applied over a line drawing without disturbing it.

Knowlton Church
Wash Media - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Indian Ink on Paper
18.5cm x 14.5cm (7.25" x 5.75")

The scenes are from atmospheric places. The Coastguard Cottages are on St. Aldhelm's Head in Dorset. Knowlton Church is the ruin of a Norman church built in the centre of a Neolithic earthwork. The view from Selsley Common across the Severn Estuary to Wales took me by surprise when I first encountered it. Elaine, Doris and I were on the common earlier today. It was swathed in mist and we didn't see this view - we couldn't even see the landmarks on the common until we stood next to them.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Pencil Drawing (Part 2)

 

In the Dunes
Pencil Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Pencil on Paper
15cm x 20cm (6" x 7.75")

This is a second drawing in response to the Pencil Drawing section in Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Pencil Drawing)

This is based on a photo of the beach at Walberswick - which appeared on the earlier post (Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Duotone).

I am moving on to the Mixed Media lesson, but will incorporate more pencil drawings into my sketching. I want to find a way of making them appear looser and more spontaneous. I am planning to buy some fatter lead holders (5.6mm) to allow me to quickly cover more paper – that might help. 

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Pencil Drawing

 

Ladram Trees
Pencil Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Pencil on Paper
22cm x 16cm (8.75" x 6.25")

Between the lessons on Erased Drawing and Wash Media in Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler there is a sub-section on Pencil Drawing - in which Phillip recommends making a series of pencil studies,  revisiting imagery you have used in previous exercises.

This is the first of my drawings. I’m not waiting until I have a series because I haven’t posted recently and this felt like a pivotal moment. When I started drawing and painting, this is the sort of picture I wanted to create. I quickly realised (and as Philip points out) this sort of pencil drawing takes a lot of time and I prefer drawings that appear less painstaking.

This is the same scene that appeared as "Near the Otter Estuary" on the earlier post (Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Duotone). I think it is the same stand of trees Ian Sidaway recently included on his blog - June 2020. He has painted them from Ladram bay and I have drawn them from the other side – approaching them along the coastal path from the Otter estuary. Ian says Ladrum, I say Ladram, but I'm pretty sure they are the same trees.

I haven’t done much drawing recently. I suspect the uncertainty caused by coronavirus has been sapping my enthusiasm and affecting my mood more than I’ve realised or acknowledged. I’ve been using pressure of work as a reason not to draw, but this may be an excuse more than a reality. I also think I am getting bored with drawing from photos. Drawing and painting outdoors is still a challenge, but I might be missing it. 

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Erased Drawing

Glimpses of Light
Erased Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Charcoal on Paper
60.5cm x 45cm (23.5" x 17.55")

Lesson 17 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler deals with Erased Drawing and continues the theme of tonal drawing.

Philip’s instructions are to use sand paper to create charcoal dust and kitchen paper to cover the paper with a mid-grey tone, then to use an eraser to create highlights, and to add more charcoal to the darks. I used a paint brush as well as kitchen paper to move the charcoal dust around - the whole exercise felt more like painting than drawing.

Charcoal is unlikely to become my medium of choice, but I enjoyed this exercise and gained a better appreciation of tone.

This scene has appeared before, but you probably wouldn't recognise it (see A Break in the Clouds).

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.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Collage

That Mon & Brec View Again
Collage - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Collage and Ink
21.5cm x 14.5cm (8.5" x 5.75")

Lesson 16 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about collage. Philip explains the technique and sets an exercise to make collages from newspaper painted with white, black and yellow ochre acrylic paint. He cautions against tracing shapes on to the collage paper and suggests instead visualising your scalpel or scissors as drawing tools and collage as an organic process of addition and subtraction.

Portland and the Chesil Beach from Abbotsbury Hill
Collage - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Collage
21cm x 14.5cm (15.5" x 6")

The view of Portland and the Chesil beach from Abbotsbury Hill has appeared on a previous post (see From Abbotsbury Hill). This is one of my favourite views. I have precious memories of stopping in the lay-by on long hot cycle rides for an ice-cream and a cold drink.

The view from the Monmoutshire & Brecon Canal has also featured on previous posts about Drawing and Painting the Landscape (see Revealed Landscape, Partial Peak and Negative Painting).