Trees

I was lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny autumn day for my first session of outdoor sketching. I went to my local park which has lots of beautiful old trees. I enjoyed slinging a bag on my shoulder and wandering round it looking properly at the trees. I have passed them so many times but never really focussed on them.

Basic shapes in outline or
shaded areas of foliage

 Exercise 1 Sketching individual trees

I picked a tree which was a little separate from the others, and that I could sit far enough away to see the whole thing (and be in the sun!). I was mindful of needing to sketch in a freer way after the exercises and effects in the previous stage, and in the later stages of using several pencils or other utensils to get a wider range of tone.

Simple outline with main branches
added

Simple outline

Shaded areas and texture of foliage

These exercises were simple and worked wonderfully to help me grasp the structure of the tree.

I learned that breaking it up into simple parts really works. I was pleased with how easy it seemed to draw the tree approaching it in this way.



Exercise 2 Larger observational study of an individual tree

I picked a small tree which was still next to the support it had when it was a sapling. I picked this one because I love oak trees, it had an acorn despite being so young and because the contrast of the trunk and the post was interesting. I wanted to show this contrast, and the shapes of the oak leaves in the sun in some detail so I picked a fine pen to draw it.

I started well but as has happened before I got caught up in the tiny details at the expense of the whole image. The result was that again I lost the full degree of contrast in the shapes and the final image is less defined than I would like. Also I'm thinking that I should have done the whole little tree rather than a chunk of its trunk. I often avoid doing the whole of something, perhaps because of worry about what I will do in the rest of the paper - how to sketch in the background?

Observational study of an individual tree

I had taken a rug and initially enjoyed sitting there in the open air on a warm day. I got up and stretched every now and then. After an hour and a half of this one drawing, my back was hurting too much from sitting on the ground and I had to give up. Time to admit that I need to take an easel with me, however cumbersome that might be.


Exercise 3 Study of several trees

I went to the woods near me intending to climb to the top of the hill in the hope that there would be a view down onto trees, like the Greenwich Park view in the course file for this exercise.

As I walked towards it I saw a view I thought might work, and did some composition sketches.

Sketches of some groups of trees to work out what to draw for this exercise

I decided I wanted a view with more interest for me, so carried on to the high ground.

When I got there what drew me was the tunnel of trees bending over the path, with light at the top and lovely enclosed darkness at the bottom, with pale leaves providing detail. I searched around for a while for the right place to put myself where I would be able to see these, and settled down to sketch it.

I did a couple of composition sketches to work out which parts to include and what to leave out. I used a viewfinder to help with this, and the tall thin shape worked best to include both the path and the lightness of the sky while making the tunnel effect over the path the emphasis of the drawing. Having some branches in the foreground would frame it nicely.

Abandoned first attempt

My first try was not working too well. I had got bogged down in the detail again, and forgotten the tone, which is supposed to be the main point of this sketch, so I started again.

Study of several trees in pencil on white paper

Well, I'm not so pleased with this. It took me a lot of tries to get the tone approximately right. I found it very hard to do approximate large tonal areas. It was as if I couldn't believe that I could leave out the detail and it would still look like trees. But there you are, it looks better now I've got closer to what I was aiming for. I think I might go back at some point and try again.

I definitely need to work out how to look at something and see the tones 'independently' of the details.

Pets and Animals Exercise 2 Tonal study of bones and shells

Well, my interesting skull is currently at my daughter's school art department, so I had a look at some shells. The instructions were rather perfunctory, I assume because by now we are supposed to know how to pick a subject.

I found two shells which appealed to me, with lots of shape for the tone to work on. Both had holes in the shell. I guess there's something about that that makes them seem more meaningful to me. And it gives me something extra to work on that isn't just a plain shell. I tried them out several different ways around, sitting on a table made of wooden slats for a simple background.

I did some sketches of the different arrangements. I have been mulling over the idea (from Contemporary Drawing Key concepts and techniques by Margaret Davidson, 2011 Watson-Guptill NY) that 'The most important overarching concept of contemporary drawing is intentionality.' This idea is growing on me, and this sketching process is making a lot more sense in this context. That it allows the intention to become concrete and therefore be amenable to more intentional things.

My first few compositions were of the large conch shell on its own on the table.

This one emphasised the ripples on the back of the shell, and the table perspective is important.

It seemed a bit boring and pointless.

Just copying this sketch to the blog is showing me how much I need another exercise in tone - the background was a much darker tone than most of the shell, but I didn't show that at all in my sketch.

So my second try was a close-up of the rotating top of it. This had the added visual advantage of revealing the hole with the rope coming out of it.

I think this one works better, is more interesting to look at, and is a bit of a challenge to get the tones right for all those spikes.










You can see that the next one was more interesting to me in the sense that the texture drew me in and I felt I had to have a go at it, at least in rough. I noted that it and the shape reminded me of  the skin on old wrists. It also has a bit of the hole and rope, but the position of the shell in the space wasn't quite right.

One of the glories of the conch shell is the pink and orange colouring around the lips. So I tried a more conventional position for a conch standing it up on one end with the lips showing.

This gives me more opportunity for tone within the shell, as well as a bit of the same textural interest. And it looks more like a conch, but it's rather an unnatural position and not so interesting as a whole.

So I tried with both shells next to each other.

My first try pushed the interesting shapes of both shells out of the frame. And at the same time the conch spikes you can see at the top detract from the detail of the smaller shell at the bottom.

My second try at this combination was better, with the detailed smaller shell in the foreground, and the depth inside the pink and orange conch in the background.


I am finding it difficult to decide between this one, and the texture one of the conch on its own. Because I was really drawn to that texture...

The question is, which one will be better for working on tone?

I think I will have another look at the shells in the morning.

..............................................................................

On reflection, I decided that I like the texture of the conch shell so much that I want to concentrate on that, and that this will make it interesting enough on its own. I went for the 'skin of old wrists' arrangement, but with the shell the other way round so I could have the hole and rope as well.

Thinking about intentionality, I chose to restrict myself to monotones for this one as it is all about tone, adn chose an A1 sheet of paper with a little texture, B, 5B and black conte pencil. I decided on white paper to use the white for highlights, thinking that I would leave the background empty for this one so that the whole emphasis is on the detail of the shell as 3D object.

Tonal study of shell
Pencil and conte pencil on white paper

What I learned from doing this tonal study:

1. Challenges teach me things - When I started drawing today, I quickly realised what a challenge I had set myself by picking this shell with all its complex shapes, and was kicking myself for not making it easier. But after a while I got into the zone and every time I went over it with a different tone it got clearer to me what was important, and how amazing this shell is.

2. Having to go over something several times is not a sign of failure. I saw more each time. And the drawing got better each time. Effective things I did in particular were the part where I made the darkest bits darker, and when I rubbed out the smudges at the very end to show where the brightest tones were. Each time I saw more how the light made the shapes. In fact, I think I might try drawing this one again so that I can keep seeing more..

3.  Serendipity helps. Before this, I didn't realise that my new conte pencil would not draw on top of pencil graphite, so when I started doing the darkest bits, I saw that, and was worried that I was going to have to start again. But it turns out that the little thin dark marks it makes on top of pencil are just what was needed to highlight the hard shapes of the horns of this shell.

4. This drawing has reminded me that I was advised by my tutor to try out different ways of drawing textures in my sketchbook. For example, the rope texture is a combination of tone changes along the length, with black diagonal marks in the places I saw them, but nowhere else. The texture lines on the shell are there in real life, and in some places this looks right, and in others it doesn't quite work. There are some parts of the shell which have been eroded in tiny holes, and I tried to represent this using dots but it doesn't look much like it... Something to work on.

5. The sun moves round, even in the middle of the day!

6. Looking at this drawing again I can see I still have a way to go to confine myself to tones, and it would be worth trying it again just to do it again very extremely just in tones.


What I did next:

I have been reading in 'Contemporary Drawing' about Seurat's choice of highly textured paper for drawing with conte crayon, giving his drawings a profound tonal quality. That he chose this deliberately although it reduces the opportunity for detail a lot. The valleys in the paper give the white parts of the tones. I thought I would try drawing the shell like this to see how it works.

Sketch of conch shell using very rough paper and conte crayon

I found, as the author did, that the detail didn't come through, and that it was a constant effort not to let the whole thing get too dark. I was also aware of the need to somehow graduate the background, which in practice meant making the foreground a little paler than the back. It took work to get the black bits really black, because the valleys in the paper were not easily coloured - I had to go over them a lot, and when it comes down to it I don't think I did got the shape to show the way I did with the pencil drawing. Worth trying again I think, focussing on the main areas of tone a lot more.

While doing this I was also thinking about how it would be an interesting exercise to try this kind of 'pointillist' tone sketch using rug hooking (because each loop would be a point of colour, and I could use just black and white to see if it could be done).

At Home Exercise 2 composition - an interior

The task was to pick a view in the house and try out several slightly different views, using mainly tone.

I picked the complex view of the entrance hall with pillars and interesting wooden floor.

The view I started with was from the stairs, looking down, so that the walls made a W shape in the picture.

This is the first sketch. There was light coming from the window in the door to the right, and from behind the pillar. I had to do a lot of rubbing out and ended up with the light areas being in all the wrong places.

I didn't quite believe that the walls leaned out as much as they did and I felt the need to draw in the corner although in real life it was only visible by the change in tone from one wall to the other.

Looking at this again it's amazing how I disregarded the much deeper tone of the floor. I didn't concentrate so much on the tone for this one and it shows in the whole thing looking a bit bare and flat. There's something 1950s about it too, which isn't really how it feels to be there. What do I mean? Something about it being constructed rather than felt. No atmosphere. (Nothing against 1950s styles just the way I think of this in my head).

This one's from below, me practically lying on the floor. A bit of a difficult position to draw from. It ended up being mostly about the objects rather than the architecture. I don't know if that's wrong, exactly, but it seemed to me that it would be more useful from the point of view of learning to draw, for me to do one with more angles and light variations to it.

It is a nice composition though, with the focus on the objects but lots of interest elsewhere too, and the unusual perspective makes it more interesting.

This is my next attempt to draw the view from the stairs. I took a slightly different angle on it to reduce the detail behind the pillar, and I tried with a landscape piece of paper to see the effect. I agree that its more intimate this way, which is suitable for the feeling of this hall, without losing the interesting shapes. I got the variety of tone a bit better in this one, but there's much more tone detail needed on the pillar etc. And I had to rub out some smudges on the window in the door on the right, which was not very effective.

Finally, I tried a more straight-on view, which meant that I couldn't get as much distance from it, and therefore ended up with a smaller area in the picture again.



Of these four sketches, I picked the first one to repeat for the tonal study, but using the paper in landscape to emphasise the W and focus a bit more on the lovely dark wood floor.