SUNDAY WORKSHOP November 10th Landscape - drawing into painting.

I'm almost home from my amazing road trip! Here is the outline plan of the workshop day below.

This workshop day is about the working drawing as a useful system of note-taking for a painting. I shall ask you to choose one of the images I’ve brought and, using pencils, pens, colour pencils etc., you’ll draw freely from the image you’ve chosen. The drawing itself is not about its inherent loveliness! It’s much more about putting into the drawing the information you want to extrapolate from the landscape image. This is your first edit – you edit out anything you don’t want to bring to the final landscape painting.

Look first for some of the important structures – a horizon, some verticals, diagonals, greater shapes, simplified shapes. Build some details onto these structures but remember you are the artist in control…you can choose the way you interpret the information you take from your landscape image.   

Make a couple of drawings, try things. Be bold!

When you’ve created a couple of sketches, you’re going to add watercolour to them. This is to give you colour ideas, efficient tonal information and a feel for making the painting.

Making the painting:

Think about the medium/media you’d like to use, watercolour, acrylic, gouache, mixed media etc. and then decide the best way to begin. If using watercolour, think about your lightest places, about using a pale wash to leave them light (reveal them!) and working some wet-into-wet. The wet-into-wet will give you a lovely indication of your landscape without being initially too precise. Precision comes with the next layers once this first layer is dry. Look for some shapes with both hard edges and soft edges. The hard edges represent a place which is shown with a line in your drawing/s.

If using acrylics or oils, you can paint on canvas, paper, canvas-paper…almost anything! Begin by marking the main shapes, horizontals, verticals and structures using a nice neutral colour (mix blue and brown). Use white paint like giant tippex…to correct and renegotiate your shapes, marks and lines. Gradually introduce colour, be sure to keep tone in mind (light and dark) as colour can sometimes distract us from the various tones. Negotiate, negotiate and negotiate!

If you’re planning to mix your media, mark out the main shapes, horizontals, verticals and structures using a neutral paint or perhaps charcoal, soft pastels. The idea of mixing your media is to feel able to change and correct your work as you go along. You can really try and add any medium and yet still bring the painting back to white (using white emulsion etc.) in order to ‘correct’ it.

Next workshop: December 22nd – ‘watercolour and winter foliage'