Experience the Landscape

It is more than just a drawing.  I experience the view through my pencil. The air is crisp, the wind is calm and the view is spectacular. 

Serenity I

Graphite

6 x 9”

Arches Hot Press paper

When choosing a landscape to draw, I tend to select scenes that generate a mood.  This mountain scape just embraces relaxing and calmness.  My heart rate lowers, I breathe deeper and slower, my mind clears of all the chaos and hustle of daily life.  

The first step in this drawing this was to create a even tone background shared by both the sky and water.  This was done by applying crosshatching lightly across the entire page then using a chamois to smudge the graphite to a smooth finish.  To create crisp edges, I use a small t-square and mars eraser and erase the overage to a crisp edge.  As long as the crosshatching strokes and chamois-smoothed graphite is lightly applied, the graphite sits on the surface of the paper and can be easily erased.  The Arches hot press paper lends itself well to this technique.  

The next step is to remove areas of the graphite for highlights by using a kneaded eraser.  The mountain is rendered using vertical pencil strokes starting at the edges with firm dark strokes tapering to lighter ends.  And the trees are used in dark strokes forming the pine tree branches and the bushes.  The water is so calm that the tree reflections almost mirror the trees but are slightly less defined.  Gentle breaks in the tree reflection show slight waves of the water.