I have three main areas that I include in my favourite walks or spots and I think I’m including a bit of each. My continuous narrative included the Basins and the Nature reserve and the place I concentrate on for the sequential exercise is the place close to home. It’s easy and safer to capture this in the evening. I include the photos taken at different times of day. The first below is an aerial shot taken from my bedroom window. The weather is calm, warm and a bit dull.
The shot below was taken on the same day at 5.40pm. The sun is shining and casting long shadows from houses and trees.
I loved the colour palette for this drawing above and I used my new indigo colour. I mixed up the indigo mainly for the sky and went for a lot of bleeding. The greens were a mix of sap green and ultramarine and a touch of indigo. It’s becoming my favourite colour in a watercolour palette. I rigorously put in my trees and sprayed the paper to allow the bleeding. As the paper dried I added a touch of dry brush grey in the foreground and the long shadows. I would like to recreate this one again as I like the effects and the colours but I stop after ten minutes again. My image captures a darker scene and some inclement weather maybe.
As I’d not really picked up a pen or pencil to draw I decided to try at least one graphite stick drawing. While I used the side of the stick for the leaves on distant trees the willow tree I found difficult to depict. They sway a lot in the wind and are lovely to watch.
This isn’t working well enough for me so I quickly use a conte crayon in the hope of giving the willow some life.
The conte crayon gives it a bit more definition and depth and the willow like long grass does sway and there’s a bit of movement.
There is nothing better than an early morning walk to help invigorate you and to set you up for the day. If sunny the early morning light is quite strong and the sun kissed branches look fabulous. I’m often looking out on sunny days and love how the sun also radiates and changes even the colour of the branches of the trees. In this regard I’ve tried to capture an early evening that is more dark as the night draws in. The colour of the trees change to cooler and darker blue greens and the sky also darker blue grey shades. I decide to be a bit radical and use oil pastels and dilute the drawing with zest it brushed in. Below is the coloured up pastel rigourously blasted onto the paper pressed harder where I want more dense colour. Sadly my pastels don’t have the darker blue I would like but I’ll see how it turns out.
The next image shows the washed in zest it applied with a hog brush as I want there to be lighter areas and brush strokes showing.
I quite like the effect of the lighter green which is a bit silvery like willow leaves and the light areas of the paper help define the willow. There’s some depth in the bushes and trees too. The zest it and the hog can work well and I might use this more as I will with the inks.
All three together are below.
On reflection I don’t think my application of the colours helped to reflect the different times of the day well enough but I was a bit more occupied with the mediums working well in terms of definition. My pastels didn’t have the right blue to help make my sky deeper and I didn’t want to risk overlay with black. To effect more light for a sunny morn I should have added more yellow green to the trees in places where the sun kissed the leaves. This was a good exercise and I shall be more mindful of the changes of light.
Drawing 2 Interpreting the environment 