For this exercise I wanted to build upon my last exercise and really explore that scene of the woodland and trees again. I wanted to improve my perspective skills and I thought the composition worked really well to establish a foreground, middle ground and background and I wanted to work on my drawing skills and get that perspective and the dimensions of the drawing completely accurate this time. I re-visited the photographs I took as well as my drawing and got to work.
It is clear to see that my attention to tone and texture has greatly improved compared to my first attempt at this drawing. You can see the highlight of bumps and shapes that weren’t present in the first sketchbook drawing, furthermore the twists and shapes of the bark texture on the trees, including knots, are way more visible and easier to make out and identify and add more realism to my drawing.
Importantly for this exercise, I feel I better established the foreground, middle ground and the background more effectively. The grass and ground closer to the viewer contain more shadow and detail, and as it moves out, further away, you can see how the light is more open in that area, compared to how lots of shadows are cast by the trees in the foreground. I think that this is an area I vastly improved upon compared to my first sketch, the shadows of the trees seem to make more sense. However I feel I did worse on the long grass in the background, it became very repetitive and like a pattern rather than long grass that is random and feels real. I think that aspect of the drawing makes it feel more flat, but it is still more dimensional and effective overall than my first attempt.
One part of the background which I feel I had improved upon is the shadows of the trees which are further out. I kept to my approach of blocking in the shape as to not over-complicate the drawing since there is already a lot going on in terms of my markings, I feel I made it darker and more noticeable but not too dark that it takes away from the view.
I stuck with my initial idea of not including foliage, removing it, to keep the focus on the branches and the tree’s notable the texture and the tone. I wanted a big focus on the light and how it interacts with the environment and the texture of the tree,s and I feel this helped establish the different areas of the drawing (foreground from the middle ground to the background). As talked about in the exercise description, I feel I have established a sense of space that wasn’t quite present in my previous drawing which adds so much dimension and visual interest to the piece.
I feel I followed the exercise guidelines well, depicting a lot of detail towards the front of the drawing and decreasing this as the landscape goes further out, until a blocked in shape of the tree line is all that remains. I feel that I could have done better at this when it came to the long grass, as the ground begins to show less and less shadow and detail and the long grass introduces detail again with how I approached that part of the drawing. I should have kept this in mind and tried a different way of depicting the long grass so it fit in better with the landscape as a whole. Maybe I should have tried blocking that in as well as the distant treeline to make it fit and blend into the background to improve on my first attempt. However I am happy I can identify this issue now if I couldn’t during the drawing process.
As I move forward onto looking at perspective in more detail, I should take on board where I went wrong in this drawing and look to improve on this as I look at this aspect of drawing in more detail. Loosing detail as I go further into the middle ground and background is key to making an effective drawing that establishes both space and perspective.
I could try and introduce colour and see how that can affect my approach to landscapes and perspective as well as trying to improve with my current medium of pen. I also want to try mixing my medium of pen and explore ink, and look at a more expressive way of depicting a landscape as John Virtue does. Although I have a lot to work on and this exercise has helped me highlight the areas I do need to work on, I am happy to see a clear improvement in my skill and my drawing technique with pen.
Simona Hopewell : Drawing 1 