Landscape

This week's task was a landscape drawing task which I thoroughly enjoyed as I do not have much experience with drawing landscapes. I chose to draw this Tudor style building in a local park so that I could draw on site. However, due to this, I forgot to take any process photos because I got so invested in the drawing on site. I tried to go on a clear day so that all the natural colours would be brought out by the light. For this piece I had to consider perspective and the tones of the building and foliage as I chose to use coloured pencil as my medium. There were a number of different assets to consider in perspective when initially sketching this piece. My quick thumbnail sketches allowed me to decide from which angle I wanted to draw Bramhall Hall in order to capture an appealing landscape composition. I chose to draw it from a slight angle as it really highlighted the horizontal lines of the house and captured the steps, along with the foliage either side, creating a frame to the image. As with my previous coloured pencil piece, I built up the colour gradually so as not to put down too much information at once before I had finalised how the perspective would look. I found this piece to be quite challenging because of all the geometric architecture on the side of the building. I tried my best to think about these in perspective but I can see a few inaccuracies within my work. 

In terms of compositional points, the bulk of the building and landscape is on the left side of the piece, fading down to a more sparse area. I like this composition as it allows the eye to follow along horizontally but also be viewed as one. I found the foliage quite challenging to depict using coloured pencils as there are a lot of different tones and layers of green within it. I wanted to try to capture as much of the depth as I could without spending too long on this asset as I wanted to focus on the accuracy of the building itself. The steps are something I would do differently next time; because I was stood at angle, there was an extremely dark shadow cast down onto the top step so it blended in too much with the background. In order to do this differently next time I would move my viewing angle slightly to the left so that the steps would make more sense perspective wise within the piece. 

Here are some examples of the thumbnail sketches I used to decide from which angle I was going to draw my landscape. Initially, I was going to stand at the side of the building but I wanted to capture a longer and more horizontal depth to the image. Therefore, I opted for a more middle ground which shows the side and front views in a more three point way. 

Overall, I was quite happy with this piece as I enjoyed using colour in order to express a landscape in three point for the first time, combining natural elements with a central man- made structure.

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