Drawing Landscape Sketchbook Walk and 360 Degree Studies

Sketchbook Walk
Initially I didn’t see much of interest in most views on my sketchbook walks and some even looked quite bland. But on re-examining and checking the direction of certain lines and shapes I noticed that these helped to establish a directional flow around the composition. In places they had the effect of drawing the eye towards certain features such as a building or distinctive tree or trees, with the potential for use as focal points.

The biggest challenges were for me, areas of foliage such as lines of trees across a middleground and large patches of grass and heather. I squinted my eyes to try and make out only basic shapes, but if there was a continuous line of trees going across a middleground it was impossible to make them look sufficiently interesting, at the same time simplify them. This was evident in sketch no. 4, Doneraile Park, Sketchbook Walk 2. However, I think there was some progress in the right direction with the trees, by the time I did the larger more finished drawing of a similar scene. 

Sketches from the first walk (above)

I became frustrated with my lack of success in attempts to simplify the view, yet obtain variety and interest from the patterns and textures. The large grassy pastures in some sketches on the sketchbook walks looked mostly featureless, apart from the odd grazing cow or subtle shadows and directional lines which were often tricky to make out. The only detail I wanted to add here was to give some subtle impression of varied terrain, rather than leave a huge yawning empty space, so I just allowed my pencil to loosely follow the direction of them. I think the detail is probably minimal enough to still act as a welcome contrast to the more detailed areas.   A couple of sketches from the first walk
As I wasn't happy with the background in my first sketchbook walk – it was playing on my mind, so I decided to go on a second sketchbook walk almost a month after the first one and in another location. The background in my first attempts featured an old folly on a hill and I felt that this was pulling too much attention away from anything else. Because it was in the background I felt it wasn't in a suitable place, otherwise it might well have worked as a focal point. It was so dominant that any reasonable sense of distance also seemed unobtainable. With hindsight, maybe I could have made up some distant hills behind the folly, so that it could have been used as a focal point in the middle ground. On the second occasion and with different views, I was hoping that I would have more success with simplification and aerial perspective. It was easier to obtain a sense of distance and form in scenes where there were trees at varying heights, shapes and distances away, as it gave more sense of overlapping forms. To help strengthen the composition, I didn't stick rigidly to the arrangements in the actual scenes and moved certain features around slightly. 

 I was conscious that treatment of the midground had to involve adding more detail and contrast than the background, but less than the foreground. I had trouble with this in some sketches, but because of the practice the sketches gave me, by the time I did the finished drawing I think had an increased awareness of the midground in relation to the composition as a whole.

In dull or hazy conditions - as in the first 2 sketches in Doneraile Park, it was more of a challenge to discern light and shade than on a bright day when contrasts were clear. When conditions were dull and overcast, making tonal values hard to pick out, I made up shadows here and there, but none existent highlights were more difficult to visualize and I really had to squint constantly to pick anything out.

Above three pages - sketchbook walk sketches - Doneraile Park

Being able to make use of natural light and shade in turn seemed to help me enormously to create some sense of form and distance with tonal shading. Other elements which contributed to this were: the placement of objects/features as overlapping shapes, sometimes gradually reducing in size as they moved into the distance, such as fence posts, tyre tracks and pathways. The distant hills or trees helped the appearance of any atmospheric haze (360 degree and some sketchbook walk sketches) with very light uniform shading.

In the more finished drawing (Plotting Space...) I think certain areas would have improved with further study of:

(a) cattle grazing to help familiarize me with their individual characteristics.

(b) the foreground was quite uninteresting in reality with short grass in slightly dappled shade. Some studies beforehand  of rough foreground grasses would have helped to give me more idea of the best way to depict them. The actual grasses I drew are mostly upright and they could look more interesting if I had varied the direction of them with multi directional marks.

(c) the sky was devoid of clouds on the day I made the sketches and the horizon was high from the viewpoint I chose, and I thought it might improve the composition to give a suggestion of the sky by adding very light clouds.  


360 DEGREE STUDIES 
Summit of a nearby hill - Kilcruig (or Carrigieenamronety) what a mouthful! Part of a range called the Ballyhouras. Some here would call it a mountain.

A bit of a stiff climb, but a very peaceful walk. Hidden under a rock is a tin box containing a visitor’s book.

Wide open views all around of surrounding hills and mountain ranges as far as parts of  the four counties of Cork, Tipperary, Limerick and Waterford.

In a couple of my 360 degree studies large blankets of heather, interspersed with rocks, took up most of the foreground – in one of them (no. 1 below) the heather stretched away into the middleground - looking quite monotonous.

1  looking south

2  looking west

3  looking north

4  looking east

Above - the four 360 degree sketches

When I did the 360 degree studies and my second sketchbook walk there was a much stronger sense of distance in the scenes before me than with the first sketchbook walk - top. An atmospheric haze threw the background into relief,  and it was further away. This in turn seemed to help to make the middle ground more distinguishable in most cases, providing there was something in that area to use as a focal point, or to balance a focal point perhaps in the foreground, as in the second 360 degree sketch (above). Once I had completed the 360 degree sketches on the hilltop, I realized I would have preferred to have done the more finished sketch (Plotting Space) from one of these. The drawback was on that occasion I forgot to take my camera along, so I didn’t have enough confidence to use any of these sketches without photos to back them up.  I reckoned it was safer instead to use a sketch with some photographic back-up.

SOME SKETCHES AND PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY DOING THE 360 DEGREE  STUDIES

Above are two sketches which I later followed up with paintings - 'Distant Worlds'  inspired by the 360 sketches. I had no qualms about doing the paintings from sketches without photos, but then I wasn't too worried about reality on this occasion. Maybe I was a little over concerned about it before.