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.

Stone Walls

Top of the Rollers
Watercolour on Paper
16cm x 22.5cm (6.25" x 8.75")

This picture was hard work. My initial washes were a disaster. I went too dark, too early and ended up with a horrible mahogany coloured mess. I nearly abandoned, but I managed to lift a lot of the colour and was left with an interesting base layer. I then modelled each of the stones individually – each one becoming a little painting in its own right. 

Stone Walls is the last topic in the Earth Textures chapter from Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice. I'm looking forward to the next one – Skies and Weather.

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.

Stone Masonry

Harbour Wall
Watercolour on Paper
 22.5cm x 16.5cm (8.75" x 6.5")

Stone Masonry is the penultimate topic in the Earth Textures chapter from Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice.

The picture is of a piece of St. Michael’s Mounts’ harbour wall. The outbreak of little white spot's are small limpets attached to the stones.

You find a photo of a section of the wall here https://www.stmichaelsmount.co.uk/images/uploads/feature/Village_and_Harbour/_2560px/st-michaels-mount-village-harbour-kathryn-yengel.jpg. The bit I painted is further round towards the mouth of the harbour - close to where you get on and off the ferries that operate at high tide.

As well as taking Claudia’s advice I also took some more of John Lovett’s advice from his book Textures, Techniques and Special Effects for Watercolor – as I have done for the last couple of topics.

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.

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.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Mark Making Tools

Prussia Cove
Mark Making Tools - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Acrylic Ink on Paper
34cm x 28cm (13.5" x 11")

The exercise for Lesson 24 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is to create your own mark making tools and explore the marks they make. I score an F for this one because I didn't read the instructions properly.  I missed a couple of critical points in Philip’s explanation:

• The exercise is about making pens - not brushes
• Philip used bamboo cut from the garden as handles for his home-made pens

I used fingers, sponges, old credit cards, bits of mount board, sticks, cotton buds and spray bottles to draw instead of making them into tools because I couldn't find anything to use as handles - even though Elaine and I have bamboo bushes in our garden - doh. Then I got carried away and treated this as a painting exercise because Phillips' home made tools look more like brushes than pens.

The Old Lodge
Mark Making Tools - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Acrylic Ink on Paper
35cm x 24.75cm (13.75" x 9.75")

Never mind, I can cope with the F, I was getting bored with monochrome and I still managed to learn a bit more about mark making.