Misty Morning over Shaver Lake

Here's a quick rendering from a photo taken by my friend Peggy Allsman. Her son spent a scout weekend at Shaver Lake in California. It's a small drawing just 4x8"

Wisconsin Barn

It's been almost a year since my last barn drawing, so I'd say it's about time for a scene closer to home. Just on the east side of the Mississippi, Wisconsin landscape displays beauty at every turn. This barn is tucked between trees with a vista that spreads out behind.

After playing with a number of different composition possibilities, I've got decided to get started and see where the pencil leads me. Here are the steps I've done so far. The size of the drawing is 10x18 on Mellotex paper stock. It's a relatively new paper for me and is ultra smooth.

The sky is created through a series of cross-hatching and chamoised smooth. I started with a F .5mm mechanical pencil and cross-hatched 3 layers of light, smooth pencil strokes. Then using a chamois to smooth the layer out. 3 layers of 2B cross-hatching, chamoised smooth with a final 2 layers of 2H cross-hatch applied with a light chamois blending to finish a smooth silver-toned sky. I have lightly blu-tacked the clouds. These will be developed as the rest of the drawing develops.

The trees behind the barn are starting to be formed. I start at the tips of the trees and work my way to the dense centers. I keep the leaves loose and open at the tips, allowing much of the sky to peak through. The open areas are as important as the leaf bundle placements. This gives way to the character of the tree. A 4B chisel point clutch pencil allows me to 'paint' the layers of leaves into the trees.

Shadow Lake Outlet

With some assistance from a wonderful artist friend, Vince Whitehead, I tweaked a couple of areas and really brought depth to the drawing. Added darker trees to the lake edge and added some highlights to the water, and lightened the mountain as it touches the sky. Vince is a talented pen & ink artist, http://www.rural-route-one.com/, and we share a common interest in rural landscapes.



Strong pencil strokes and and negative drawing carries this drawing to completion. Keeping the entire composition loose with minimum detail helps to emphasize movement and energy.



This is another from the Yosemite series. I started this drawing a bit differently than usual as I wanted to block in the foreground rock bluff on the left. (Since I'm a lefty, I typically start in the background and work my way right to left).

I then roughly sketched in the trees behind the rocks. These will get much darker as I work my way through the scene. I'm not getting too detailed as this is more an exploration of composition of light and shadows..... but then isn't that true for any drawing?

Whenever you are using reference photos, try various crops. The brush in the foreground is too dominant. By just cropping a bit of the right and bottom off, the central focus of the scene pops out.

Shadow Creek Falls

I have enjoyed working on this beautiful landscape. While there is probably a lot I could still work on, I think I'm going to call it done. Leaving portions of it unfinished leaves the eye content to stay in the center of the gorge...as it should be.

Enjoy

Diane

Shadow Creek Falls - WIP4 & 5

Wip 4: Here is a small update. I am slowly working

my way down the cliff. The tree on the right will eventually blend into the cliff behind and won't be as prominent.

Wip 5 : I'm bouncing a bit between the lower left area and the area around the tree on the right. These two sections will need to balance each other in both detail and darks. I'm also starting to tone down some of the highlights on the rocks. The whites need to be retained for just the brightest highlights.

Shadow Creek Falls

Shadow Creek Falls is nestled in the southern portion of Yosemite and is part of the Ansel Adams Wilderness Trail. This continues a series of drawings from my son's hiking trip to Yosemite last fall.

Part of the challenge to working with an impressive vista is to decide what to include and exclude. I am posting the reference photo to show you just how complex of a scene this is. Matt does an excellent job taking reference photos. He takes full scene shots as well as zoomed-in areas. He has a great sense of balance and composition that makes his photos a pleasure to work with.

My goal is to minimize the complexity and to emphasize the inter-play between the shadows, the tension of the boulders lodged between the crevices and the water finding it's way under, over and round the rocks.

The first step is to crop the image eliminate much of the 'extras' in the scene. Just this small change makes quite a difference.

Wip 1:

I have started with the distant background of the the mountain range. Snow is still visible on these glaciers in September. The tree line diminishes as it reaches to the top of the range.

Drawing Specs:
Paper: Fabriano Watercolor Hot press
Size: 11x17
Pencils used in the background: 2H flat chisel point clutch pencil and F .5 mm mechanical pencil for the trees.


Wip 2 - This scene has a number of background drops or layers. The mountain range creates two layers, one overlapping the other. Then another group of rocks fall between the range and another grove of trees. These have more form and definition to them but mostly drawn using negative drawing. This means drawing the dark space between the trees instead of drawing the actual trees. Once the tree shape is formed, detail is lightly drawn in to give the tree texture. Pencils used at this juncture are: 2B and F .5 mm mechanical pencils.


Wip 3: The Fabriano paper offers the ability to build up many layers of graphite. Starting with 4H - 2H flat chisel point clutch pencils allows large 'blocks' of shading to be done. Then alternating B and 2B creates subtle darkening. The darkest areas demand a strong application of 2B.

This is just over 1/2 of the image as the falls will continue to emerge down on the paper. I believe the image will remain unresolved on the edges, so the focus of the eye will remain on the falls itself.

Shadow Creek Falls - Sketch

This is a prelimary sketch of a drawing that I am currently working on. I wanted to explore the shadows and the shapes of the rocks/boulders as they envelope around the water falls.