Practise micro landscapes
In the second of three articles on improving your landscape painting, Tom Cringle builds on the skills you learned last month with exercises to help you to loosen up
In the second of three articles on improving your landscape painting, Tom Cringle builds on the skills you learned last month with exercises to help you to loosen up
The process of creating art should be enjoyable, we should not just concentrate on the result. Remember, you don't need to overcomplicate. If you practise the simple methods shown here, you should be able to reinvigorate your approach and, most importantly, loosen up and find more freedom when practising your art.
Artists can be too worried about how a picture looks, concerned about the accuracy of the representation they are producing. I would argue it's more important to ask how does the picture feel, and what impression does it give the viewer?
Last month I talked about doodling and continuous line drawing, which in my view is a natural progression from doodling. Both are relaxed and spontaneous methods of drawing. Both can produce glorious, imaginative and free artwork. The more relaxed you allow yourself to be when you draw or paint, the more free flowing and expressive you can be too. To approach your art in a more relaxed and Zen-like way, it helps to have a method that you can trust, that will give you confidence, on which you can then build. The key to doing something you trust is to start simple.
Micro landscapes
When I teach I like to boil everything down, to reduce and simplify. My first tool is to work quickly on a small scale. This is what I call a 'micro landscape'. To me it is the first, simple and quick step in towards choosing compositions and producing a full-scale work of art.
If you start to utilise this technique you can learn to quickly assess views you see, reduce them to the simplest form and, therefore, work out if they might be attractive to paint in a larger format. It is also good practice for your eye, brain and hand coordination to work quickly, without worrying about what you are producing. Rather than
battle for hours on a composition you potentially give up on, you can create many micro-views in minutes. Try to introduce this technique when you are starting your next piece of work. At worst, just use it as a warm-up for larger work.
Using continuous line
Once you have mastered the micro landscape the next step is to work at a larger scale. The important point here is not to panic but to simply take the skills you are hopefully now confident with and apply them to a bigger piece of paper. You will break down landscapes into shapes and use continuous line to build them up.
I said earlier that to keep your drawings relaxed and free flowing, you have to have a system that you can trust and enjoy using. ‘Up-scaling' becomes much easier if you practise the earlier exercises and become confident with them. You will have noticed that some of the exercises are similar or overlap. In my experience the best way to learn something is to keep the steps small and linked and, as with any subject, repetition.
I hope that by following these steps you will discover a refreshing, quick and loose way of drawing that allows you to express more feeling and freedom in your work. It should also give you more confidence in your rendering of practical skills as well as help you to compose your pictures.
Hopefully you will see that the aesthetics of the result are born from the approach you take: the more relaxed you are in the production, the more inert beauty will seep out.
EXERCISE ONE MICRO LANDSCAPES
For the exercises here you will need paper and pencils – soft if possible (Bs to HB). Charcoal and pens can be used too. If you have colour – pastels etc, you can use those too, when required.
For these little landscapes I would recommend you work at a scale of about 3in or 4in squares or rectangles, quickly and with freedom. You can do these anywhere – it only requires pencil and paper; a sketchbook is ideal
Now produce a sheet of mini landscapes. Work on any size paper you like. Start anywhere on the page and roughly draw a small box.
Draw several more similar size shapes, fit as many on the page as possible. Try to keep the shapes random and be experimental; do some long ones, squarer ones and taller ones.
Now, using photos from your camera, computer, magazines or books, find examples of landscapes to sketch from. Try to find a variety of landscapes and don’t just stick to one type. When you have chosen your first image you can start drawing. Look for simple shapes to draw within your frame. The key to this process is to work quickly, loosely. Don’t use a ruler and resist rubbing out.
Be prepared to edit your box as you go – if you start working in a square box, and you change your mind, expand or shrink the box to suit.
Once you have done one, move to the next box and so on until you have a full sheet. Now sit back and admire your work and choose your favourite micro landscape, one that ‘feels’ good, one you might like to expand and work on more. If you don’t like any of them, try some more. Each drawing may take a few seconds to a minute to do.
EXERCISE 2 MAKE A LARGER SKETCH USING CONTINUOUS LINE
In this exercise I will take you from producing a micro sketch to a creating a larger, free-flowing composition. We will also introduce what we learnt from doodling, sketching loosely and being free.
STEP 1
Repeat Exercise One, but this time work with only one scene or view. You can use the photo here or feel free to use your own, but don’t tackle anything too daunting. This time you will use the micro landscapes to play with the view, and experiment to find the best crop before you up-scale it
STEP 2
Choose the one you want to work with – the view that feels best to you – and reproduce that micro landscape. But I want you to look only at the drawing you have done, not the original photo you were working from. I want you to reproduce the shapes in the view
STEP 3
Turn the photo and your larger drawing upside down. The reason for this is to fool your brain: you become less distracted by objects and more able to concentrate on the shapes in the picture. Carry on breaking the objects down into smaller parts. Remember to draw the shapes you see, not the objects that you see and enjoy, not just reproduce a copy of the sketch of the original view.
The purpose of these is to start to learn to enjoy what you are drawing rather than worry about how accurate a reproduction it is
STEP 4
Now you could carry on building more and more layers of shapes, adding the shapes of tones and shadows, but we are trying to simplify and each time you add a layer you add more complexity, which is what we are trying to avoid.
If you wish, turn the drawing the right way up again. You are now going to reintroduce continuous line to your drawing.
(Continuous Line recap: simply keep the pencil on the paper, don’t lift it off, even when you are moving across the paper from one part to another). Imagine yourself conducting the pencil freely access the paper, swooping around the objects you have drawn as though casting a long mystical spell, meandering from shape to shape, linking them with a long curving web of silk thread that will unify them and bring them together. Try to lose yourself and be free
STEP 5
As your drawing grows, experiment with adjusting the line strength to see how it affects the tone. If you do break the line, perhaps start again with a different type of lead or even a colour. As you near completion look more at your work than the scene you are drawing. Concentrate on the aesthetics of your line quality, rather than accuracy of reproduction. Use the intensity and quantity of the line to increase the tonal range of your drawing. Try not to shade or hatch.
Now step back from your work and look at it. Admire what you have done
Next month: Converting sketches to larger work