Landscapes in Colored Pencil

I see a lot of colored pencil drawings/painting both from artists friends here and others that I have made through the internet. Most are beautiful and most are of single subjects, still lifes or portraits. Few are landscapes in the tradition of the masters.

Color pencil simply seems to lend itself to find detail of a single subject. A flower a beloved pet or the arrangement of objects.

Doing a landscape in colored pencil is less common.

Most I do single subjects in colored pencil. I seldom construct a complete picture, something with a background, mid-ground and foreground. I have to wonder why.

I am working on a landscape in colored pencil right now. It is of a scene in Brook-green gardens, a public garden in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It is giving me fits. I am simply not used to working on a complete painting in colored pencil.

But I am finding that I must approach it as I would an oil painting. Even the way I hold the pencils is more like a paint brush, less like a standard pencil. So I am making brushstrokes with my pencils. Blending the colors as I would paint on a canvas.

Editing the Landscape

I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew!

This is a totally dense picture, and it will take a lot of patience to develop all the layers needed. Not just layers of colored pencil, but layers and layers of details.

I was working on it more or less as a drawing. Flat, laid out on a table, but that just is not working for me.

This drawing will have to be approached more like a painting, upright and looking to develop depth.

So it is back to the easel, upright and with my pencils held more like a brush. I need to see the entire drawing as it develops. I need to step away and view how each grouping relates to all the other areas of the work. With an oil painting, I would work dark to light, but with colored pencil I will need to work more like a watercolor, light to dark. I am working to locate the major shapes, the large blocks of value, and leaving my areas of light coming through the trees. How to select what to put, what to leave out.

The trees themselves are presenting more of a challenge. Both the rough texture of the bark along with the mosses and leaves covering all surfaces. These trees are a wealth of color and texture. Not just the bark, although that is challenge enough. These are old trees. They have lived and endured and they show it. Every time I look at them I see what a wide range of colors! From the darkest browns, up through actual white. Highlights and scaring. Mosses and lichens. Texture. What I do not see is actual black, except for the boles.

Green. Not a simple color under any circumstances, simply explodes here. The Spanish moss ranges from light almost white green down through gray-dark.

This is going to be a matter of editing. It does not work to simply try to draw each leaf and blade of grass. There are strong shapes here, but also highlights and texture. How do I convey the idea of the dense landscape without making a jumbled mess of it.  

Life Along the Ohio -Landscape - Green Bottom

Life Along the Ohio - Green Bottom
S. Tschantz

Painting of Green Bottom

There are so many beautiful scenes in and around us. We become so busy that we stop seeing them. We see right through the absolutely wonderful world we live in.

Painting the landscape can bring this back to us. Help us see what is right before our eyes.

This landscape focuses on the backwaters along the upper Ohio River. The rivers of the central US are still important to transportation and development. Seen as arteries of the country for transportation and industry,  it is easy to forget or overlook how important they are  to the health and wealth the natural world.

While based on a visit to the Green BottomWildlife Management area, it is typical of the scenes often missed as we rush by on our highways.

Take the time to really look at this incredible world around us.

Drawing the Winter Landscape Part 3 - A Departure

--First I must apology for the lateness of this post. The work was done, but illness prevented me from posting sooner. I will leave this post up a bit longer and give you a chance to view and comment--

Being inspired by a reference photo does not mean you are locked into what is in the photo or even its presentation. The reference photograph is for inspiration only. Nothing in it is sacred. In all you are going to do is repeat another artist’s work, why bother?

For this rendition of the 3 trees reference photo, I am putting away the pencils. What really intrigues me about this winter photo is the strong contrast between the white snow, dark water and virtually black trees.

I am going to depart from the standard grayscale graphite drawings. For this drawing I am trying to achieve a different feel. I am going to depart from the reference but one thing I do wish to retain is the narrow presentation, the aspect ratio. Aspect ratio is simply the relationship of length vs. width. How the height compares to the width. So in laying out the drawing space, I will make sure the length vs. the width ratio stays the same, although I am going to increase the overall size. In this way the narrow presentation of the work will remain while the drawing will be a bit more substantial.

Increasing the size, but keeping the proportion is possible. You could simply double the measurement, but that might not give you the size you want. But there is a rather easy way of doing this.

Drawing paper with guidelines

First, I decide where on my paper I want the bottom of my drawing to me. I like to leave myself a bit of a margin all around the area I am going to do the actual drawing. This gives me a margin to tape the paper to my drawing board, fasten it down and keep it stable. For this I use drafting tape, not masking tape. With my t-square (but you can use any straight edge) I will draw myself (lightly) a horizontal level. Also with the t-square (and this is important) I will find the left edge of my drawing, and draw a line perpendicular to the level base line. This line really needs to be at a right angle to the first level base line. This gives me the lower, left hand corner.

I then take my reference photo, and fold back the white margins. With a drafting dot or a small piece of drafting tape, I put the lower left-hand corner of the reference photo on the lower-left hand corner of the drawing area. Then with a straight edge I will take a light pencil and draw a diagonal line from the lower-left hand corner to the upper right hand corner of the reference photo. Also with a light line (one that is highly erasable) I will extend that line onto my drawing area.

Reference photo on drawing paper



Vertical Line



Having decided the width I want for this drawing. I will draw a border vertical line with my t-square up until it meets the diagonal line. Where the two lines cross I will (with the t-square) draw the top-level line for my drawing area. Wa-la, we have an enlarged drawing area, which is in the same proportions as the reference all without a calculator!



Add top guideline



Now, on to the drawing. You might have noticed in the photographs that the paper seems rather dark. No, the picture is not reversed or turn out too dark, it really is black. And the guidelines are white.

Black paper might seem like a strange choice for a drawing that is essentially white, but it can be very dramatic. Don’t’ be afraid of color paper! Use the paper as a part of the creation of the drawing.

The logical choice for a winter scene would be white, and white paper is the standard for drawing (or anything else for that matter) the choice of black paper necessitates a change of media. There are many media that would work well on dark paper, colored pencils, metallic ink, conte’ pastels, markers, charcoal. While you might not think black charcoal would work on black paper, it does, beautifully.

Choices

Compressed Charcoal Sticks

I want to maintain the sharp contrast of the reference, even emphasis it. So I have chosen to work with sticks of compressed black and white charcoal, relying on blending tools and overdrawing to give me a range of grays.



Working with a stick of compressed black, I lay out the major divisions, re-enforcing with the compressed white charcoal. Starting with the background and building by layers, the drawing is slowly built.




Layout the drawing





Blending the sky



Building up the snow



White charcoal is applied to the sky using the blunt side of the block. Then a cotton swap is used to blend and even out the sky. It also removes most of the white, allowing the black of the paper to change it to a soft gray. Major snow backs are built up this way—apply—blend & wipe. Water is built with careful horizontal strokes—white underscored with black then using a tortillion to blend and push the charcoal around. Various vertical strokes fill in eh background alternating between white and black. Blended together we get soft gray shapes that resemble trees in a snowstorm.

The foreground calls for bolder, stronger strokes for the 3 major trees. White over-lays the snow. Here the contrast makes the drawing.



Finished Drawing on Black Paper



So, this is the completed drawing. Any comments?

Drawing Snow in The Winter Landscape, Part 2

On to the drawing

Quick review: I am working on a winter landscape, based on a reference photo located at:
on the about.com - drawing/sketching site

now, back to the drawing.

Once the paper selection is made, you also have to decide on scale. Are you going to draw this size for size, increase or decrease the size? For this drawing, I am simply going to draw it about the same size as the reference photo, in the same long, narrow portrait mode.


Tick Marks as guides



Have you ever drawn someone, but on nearing completion, realized you don't have enough room for the top of the head? First thing I do is simply lay out the area on the paper I wish to put the drawing in. A little forethought avoids running out of room for your drawing.

I generally use faint guidelines or tick marks, as they are called to simply indicate the outside dimensions of the piece I am doing. These are most easily set by using your harder pencils very sharp and a straight edge. This helps to keep the artwork within the lines. There is a lot of talk about "drawing outside of the box", but you should leave yourself a margin in your drawings and other artwork. Gives you something to tape the mat to! All in all, guidelines help you keep the work on track.

Back to the actual drawing.

There are several challenges in doing a winter landscape. You have to making the show look real, dealing with the subtle and necessary value shifts and working for the soft texture you need to make the snow look nice and fluffy. So often it is not a mater of drawing the shapes, but shading in everything around it. Dealing with the negative shapes, which in this case are white or near white. One of the biggest challenges is finding your darks, and not being afraid of them. Shadows and shading are all important.

adding graphite

Light Source

The brighter the day, the darker the darks, even on snow. Keep this in mind. As the artist, you must be sure of the light source, where it is from and how strong it is. You can take this form the photo, or add it yourself. It is up to you, but it must be clear in your mind.

You as the artist must be sure of your light source. This is especially important if the photo reference you are using is unclear or confusing on this subject. You must be sure. If the artist is confused, the work will be confused. Now, on this project I have a slight advantage, as these are my photographs, and I remember the conditions when I took these pictures.

Snow Day,

It was a snowy day in early March, one of those deep spring snowfalls that bring such a soft blanket of snow to the area. We had had a real storm, with thunder and lightning thrown in with the heavy snow cover. But the day these photos where taken had been a rather bright, sunny day so there are nice shadows and contrasts.

When this photo was taken, the sun was beginning to lower in the west, but the shadows were not yet very long. Keeping this in mind, I know the sun would be to the right on this drawing, so things sloping away from there would be in shadow.



lightening the lines

 Cast Shadows and Contour


There are two types of shadow or shading going on here, the cast shadows from the sun and the contour shading you get with any 3-dimensional object, like the columns of the trees. Both are necessary to work this drawing. Since in this photo reference the trees now become the focal point, handling both shadows is very important.

first view

Working the shadows


There are two ways to deal with these shadows. You can use softer pencils and rework these shapes, and you can use blending tools, like a stump or tortillion. Many blending tools are possible for any drawing. I tend to favor the judicious use of kneaded erasers. This seems to work especially well on snow scenes. Sometimes it is just as important to remove graphite, as it is to apply it.



 Switching back and forth with my B pencils, I block in the major shapes, then start working details, lighting backgrounds to get the overall gray scale of the Black and White photo. I find working on the whole picture easier than doing any one area completely, then moving on. By working with the entire drawing, I am able to adjust the level of detail and maintain overall values. I do not end up with a drawing that is a monotone of a single value, or overly detailed in all areas. I also use the kneaded eraser to modify my drawings.



Stepping back, I make an overall evaluation of the drawing to see if it gives off the feeling I want.

I can then make any adjustments needed to bring out the focus of the drawing. I make use of all my drawing tools. Pencils, stumps, paper towels, chamois. I also use my 100% graphite pencils. These lay down wide swatches of graphite very well.

Drawing of 3 trees.

But I also use the stump to draw. Laying down a circle of graphite on a piece of scrap paper, I rub the stump across it until I get enough graphite on the stump to transfer to the white paper. This way I can get very faint amounts of shading that allow me to build up the character of the snow and bank of this frozen creek.

This was a very satifiing drawing, but not the only way to handle this subject.

While this is almost a copy of the photograph, blind copying should not be your ultimate goal, but producing creative artwork should. But feel free to tell me what you think.

I am going to do another version of this scene. Something a bit different and hopefully more creative. It is and should be your goal to go beyond the reference photo.