Developing my Studies

Looking through my studies so far, one aspect of Landscapes I really enjoyed and wanted to take further was tree’s. I really love capturing the shape of the trunk and the branches, and it was something I could develop my skills of tone and texture with. Looking at my research of Vija Celmins, I did want to develop my use of texture and capture a woodland environment that had real texture and didn’t feel flat. I wanted to be more in depth with light and tone and how to effectively capture that in a landscape environment.
I decided to find a wooded landscape would be easy for me to show and differentiate the foreground, middle ground and background in a drawing. But also showed an interesting view with light casting lots of shadows.

I settled on this view, which had the light casting shadows which created an interesting use of tone combined with the texture of the tree bark. I also liked the composition of the trees, some being far back while others being up close , it helped provide a sense of dimension within my drawing and made it visually much more interesting. When I reached the background I didn’t want to over complicate the view and used basic cross hatching to depict the body of trees further back. I am happy with this attempt and how it shows my development of perspective within a natural landscape. I like my attempt at grass in the middle ground, but it does not completely flow within the picture, especially the shadow of the tree on the ground, that needs some work, but I am happy with how my skills have developed to show a sense of perspective.
I left out the foliage as I really wanted to focus on the capturing the trees shapes and building on my skill of capturing texture and tone on complicated natural forms. I feel the winter look that came from this works well to create an immersive atmosphere that has more personality than had I tried to keep the foliage. I especially like how the branches grow and intertwine with one another at the top of the page and adds interesting detail and pattern to my drawing.
My medium of pen really pushed me to focus on my mark making skills and drawing technique. Every line and mark matters and I cannot rub it out once it has been put down, so I had to think carefully about my use of tone, and areas of light and dark to make this piece come together. I layered a lot of crosshatching, focusing on small areas at a time to get the texture right on the trees. I am happy with the out come of my approach to tone, I think it helped define the texture of the trees and provide a lot more detail, I have definitely improved there.

I think that this is a scene I would like to come back to, and explore, and get all of the details finer and much more accurate. I took some photo’s to before I started drawing on the scene in case I wanted to revisit this image again for a more intricate and defined drawing that i could take my time to get right and proportionately accurate. I think this view provides a lot of dimension with the composition and layout and allowed me to take the time to build up on skills which I was inspired to do by recent Artist Research, such as Vija Celmins attention to detail and looking at my monochrome palette and seeing how to develop it further which I was inspired by Nicholas Herbert’s pieces to do so. I think a scene like this could would well with ink, especially if I continued exploring my monochrome palette. I think I did well with this exercise and found a scene with interesting shapes and features that really appealed to me and helped further and hone my drawing skills.
Moving forward I would like to continue looking at pen a bit more and advance myself into looking at a messier, less controlled medium like ink and explore different affects and ways to approach tone and texture in a landscape, specifically how to effectively capture light and dark to create a visually stimulating drawing.