So this is another sketch I enjoyed making, and I soo love to see pictures of the beautiful Scotland. This was quite tricky to get the mist right, but really rewarding. The reference pic ist from pixabay.
A new small double take of the moorish area near where I live with plenty of birches and heather to explore. For the sketches in my sketchbook I used watercolour (liquid and pencils) and a bit of ink. The small format still is my prefered option for my artwork at present, too many stressful things going on to concentrate on bigger projects.
When taking the photographs, I was really fascinated with the roots and the colours, and I do like birches – they are fun to draw and paint, always lively and sometimes gnarly. They lighten up the often moody skies around here and give me a homely feeling, because they are so typical of this part of the country. I wish I could go to that moorish area again but it is rather impractical to reach without a car. A well, some day I´ll go – maybe when it´s not so wet to walk there, the ground is really so boggy in places one can hardly go on.
So,
I´ve been travelling to Sicily again – years ago for real, recently on paper. This is a very quick sketch with watercolour and ink (and watercolour pencils). From time to time, I step back a bit from my detail-frenzy and try to consciously leave out this and that in the hope, the viewer´s eyes “fill in the blanks”. I enjoyed sketching this, the photo has such a nice misty mountain feeling with colours I really like a lot. Have a good weekend!
So this is another beautiful view I enjoyed when travelling through New Zealand. I had no specific memory of this photo, but I gladly used it as a reference for my newest sketchbook-entry for my ongoing series “wanderlust”. I always indulge in painting dramatic skies.
So I did some more travelling on paper – this is a sketch of the lovely town Avebury in Wiltshire, England, which I visited some years ago.
I am content how the flowers turned out, and the perspective seems ok which was one of my main concerns.
I enjoyed working on this and am happy I kept going despite finding perspective drawing still very demanding. But the only answer is PRACTICE. My real passion though is to paint landscapes with a moody, gloomy atmosphere & dramatic skies and then use a good amount of pitchblack ink 🙂 … So guess I´ll just try to keep a healthy balance between idyllic, lovely, pretty and colourful vistas and those dark, melancholic & sombre sceneries.
1.Work-in-progress:
Reference photo on the left and the sketch with the masking fluid in place to cover up the areas that are supposed to stay white / light One can paint over it when it´s dry, and then after the paint is dry one can rub it off with the fingertips to then paint those spots in a lighter colour or leave it white.
2.The reference photo on the left / the finished sketch on the right
3.Scanned-in-version of the sketch…To give prove the chimney in the upper-right hand corner is NOT tumbling down as the smaller sketch seems to suggest 😉
So this is the finished painting in watercolor and ink, I enjoyed working on it.
So this is the start of a new drawing where I use a reference photo I took many many years ago while traveling in Venezuela. The view on the church was really nice – and shortly after standing on that spot up there, I discovered the same view on a postcard in a shop 🙂 .
I will use watercolor and ink, and will try to capture the atmosphere of the photo with the lush vegetation and flowers blooming in high summer. This time, I use some better quality watercolor paper than before and it is also bigger sizewise. So I am quite curious how that´ll go and if the end result is satisfying. There still is so much to learn and I really enjoy it. And it really helps to soothe (a little bit) the suffering of not being able to travel at present.
Hi there,
these succulents I came across in New Zealand when travelling, and as nowadays I like sketching + wanted to take a break from architectural drawing objects, these plants seemed nice to try.
The sketch took quite some work and the colored inks I wanted to use more extensively did not work so well here. So mainly I used watercolor pencils (at some point dry only) and liquid watercolor on simple, rather sturdy sketching paper. I will try out using different paper, and maybe some guache to maybe get some more brilliant colors.
The beginning.
Next stage.
Finished Sketch.
The photo reference.
Hi,
I just finished this sketch of St. Paul´s Cathedral – these days, I went through my various (travel) photos to find something interesting to sketch. So I came across this one, which I took 15 years ago. For the sketch I used brown & black acryllic ink and water colour on sketching paper. I do like how the roof turned out. When it comes to proportions (St. Paul´s gotten a bit slimm…) and angles, I need more practise and might try out one of those inkpens to see how it is to work with that concerning drawing more precise lines etc. But all in all, this sketchy almost messy, imperfect style does suit me and I doubt I will ever reach a stage where my lines / drawings become perfect or superrealistic. I enjoy the sketching a lot, it´s relatively quickly done as my patience and inner peace are scarce these days. So after this one, there´s already another one I´ll start today. Maybe something botanical…
This is the photo – enlarged and scanned-in, so a bit blurry:
sketch early stage:
sketch partly coloured:
finished sketch:
Hi,
I finished this very challenging sketch of the townhall-front in Seville, Spain. Here, I used ink as well as a bit of coloured ink and water colour (pens and liquid) – and I am especially proud of the patience and perseverance I put into it even though there are quite a few deficiencies I am aware of … but what the heck. It will get better from sketch to sketch I guess, and one can find fault in about anything if one tries hard enough (and usually I don´t try very hard 🙂 🙂 🙂 ).
The colours of the reference photo (cropped, by the way…the original is wider on the right hand side) are really beautiful. The sketch was fun and I put a lot of effort in getting the proportions right – but in the end I really wanted to be done with it…I think I´ll go for a nature sketch with some nice floral details next.
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Cris´s blog of art & craft 
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