Today I post my  landscape trail  drawing I did  during my  visit to South France ( the photo is below). I liked the view because  it met the requirements for this project: there was a clear perspective, a tree, a sky with clouds. They were  convenient objects as foreground, middle ground and background. Especially I liked the light and I challenged  myself  with recreating the same light  on my drawing. As it is indicated in the tip – page 70 Drawing 1, Drawing skills course:  “the sky is very important, because it is the source of light”, I thought that this particular image will meet the requirements how we should challenge ourselves.

I  used  a watercolour paper, watercolour pencils, I also used a rubber and graphic pencils – all by Derwent, also 2 brushes – medium and superfine.

First I started to analyse and determine  how much  space  on my paper I should leave for the tree, for the sky and for the sea. I paid special attention to  the space for different colours of the sky, as it was on the photo, creating a distinct border  between the grey and light areas.  I also pencilled some small clouds.  I pencilled the areas for each of large object. Then I started to pencil the tree and its brunches and bunches  of leaves. After that I started to work with dark green pencil, indicating the areas of dense leaves. I had to use black and dark green  colours together since the dense leaves appeared as  very dark on the photo, as well as brunches of the tree. After that I started to brush the leaves with wet  medium brush, working  with  smal strokes. I watched some watercolours painting tutorials in YouTube in order to avoid common mistakes.  Then I started  too work on the sea. That was far more difficult, because I tried to achieve the even tone as it was on the photo and this is hard thing to do with watercolours. It must be said that I had been touching up the sea on my all way long untill I finished all the objects on my drawing. For the  water I used dark blue, blue and grey pencils, putting several layers, trying to get the color I needed, which would be  as close as it was on the photo as possible.  I did  several layers of wet brushing and coloured pencils again,

When I did the top part of my drawing – a tree and a bottom part – trees and the sea. A tree from the upper part and trees and bushes at the lower part of the drawing are the foreground. Then I started to work on the middle part – which was light and grey, including numerous  clouds of different size and shades. I used light blue, grey pencils and I did some touch ups with yellow pencil in the light area. The light area consisted of white and very subtle yellow, I tried to achieve the natural look working with these  yellow color and a rubber, brighten up the area I needed to replicate the most of the light coming through the clouds.  Actually I am quite happy with the result: I think I managed to  transfer the perspective of the view on my drawing and the  sky  – light and clouds appeared  quite  well.  The most challenging and difficult part was the water and the leaves of the tree.  Definitely,  there is lack of  my technical skills in watercolour painting. It took most of the time to bring the even tone and keep it in line with the sky dimension so I could have a perspective of the view as it appears on the photo. Below is my work in progress. I always put a ready work as a first image  that makes it seen on my home page:

I did another  landscape drawing for this exercise: hills and the seashore viewed from the sea. I did this drawing during a boat trip I had in Italy. This is a coast near small Italian village Bordighera which is at the border with France. I used watercolour pencils by Derwent and a watercolour paper.  I paid special attention  to cloud formation.