This set of drawing was made from photographs as well. My location was on one of the hills deep inside the Brooklyn Cemetery, on a mild and sunny November (!) saturday.
Drawing 1: Mausoleum ruin and fallen tree
I switched to pen and ink for this drawing. This was to overcome the problem of faint marks in my pencil sketches for the sketchbook walk. It was interesting to see how my mark making began to work with the darker medium. The first stage of the drawing was black and white only, and I tried to differentiate the visual elements only by making different types of marks. I tried to obtain darker tones by making the marks denser. In the end, the marks alone provided not sufficient contrast.
Then I decided to use Inktense pencils, with the aim of adding green tones for the trees and grass and grey-brown for the stones and the fallen tree, hoping this would help to make the drawing clearer. Executing the washes worked better now, and the colours looked pleasing, but there was still not enough contrast. I looked sharply at my photograph and tried to detect why the photograph was so much clearer than my drawing.
Taking more distance brought the great insight. The photo had much darker tones which set off the various elements from each other. I decided to re-work the image with pen and ink. Remaining at a distance from the photo on the computer screen made the dark areas stand out much clearer, and I was able to abstract from detail. I worked rather boldly on the drawing, but the principle seemed to work and the drawing became much clearer. Maybe the fallen tree could still be better set off, and the mausoleum isn’t really clear as a building, but all in all I was satisfied with the drawing.
There may be another problem behind this, which has to do with using photographs. My original had fairly distorted verticals, and I corrected these in the mausoleum on the fly – by drawing something different from the view I had on my source. Maybe next time I’ll do the same preparatory perspective correction as with the sunset cloudscape, to have the verticals straight on the source.
In summary, I think this is an interesting drawing and it did not feel like a waste of time! But I’d never have been able to do this in 15 minutes. It took me around 60 minutes, but I found it was worth the effort. Maybe I have to work with enough time first, in order to gain experience and use this to learn how I can work faster in the future by concentrating on the essential. There’s no shortcut to this…
Drawing 2: View down the hill with a red tree
I made this drawing in a similar 3-step process as the first one, only that I used a black ink fineliner instead of pen & ink. I began with a black line sketch, then added coloured Inktense pencils and worked over the colours with a wash, and finally intensified the darks of the drawing using the fineliner again. Compositionally the picture did not have a real focus, which was difficult because it made me feel like I had to draw everything.
I think the perspective is done well here, with larger branches in the upper foreground and the smaller trees in the background. There is something like a pull of the view down the hill into the depth of the drawing. I also like how the small red tree stands out from the others.
Drawing 3: View down the hill with large trees in the Background
The third drawing was made in the same way, just back to pen & ink. I think I have overdone the dark areas here, but obviously it was too late when I realized it.
Drawing 4: View down the hill with several red trees and a large black tree silhouette
This was again made with pen & ink, but I left out the third step of working over the colour to intensify the darks. The colours were a bit too bright and I added different tones to break their overly plain character and achieve better tones. I think the mark making in this drawing works quite well. I also like how I drew the large tree to the right.
Some reflections and a series of 15 minutes drawings
Each of these drawings took my roughly an hour, but I enjoyed having lifted the time limit of 15 minutes per drawing. I felt like on a discovery and I was glad to see that my mark making with pen & ink worked so much better than with pencil. It was also a nice learning process to work towards the colours I wanted with the inktense pencils.
The series of these four coloured drawings was made from photographs over several days. After the last drawing, I decided that I wanted to do another series of sketchbook walk drawings, and this time strictly abide to the 15 minutes time limit. I produced four more drawings. I remember that while I was working on them, I did not like the results and was again very dissatisfied. But now I feel that I was making progress by becoming more defined and particular in what I was depicting, and by working in better contrasts. I think this series of sketches is more successful than the first four sketches of the review. I know that I’m still on a low skill level, but it felt like a progress from 10 % satisfaction to 15% satisfaction, which is at least a tiny bit of progress.
