Living in an urban densely populated environment is fun but it’s not the best setting for landscape drawing. I usually go to my local park when I need to get some landscape drawing done. You don’t get to see sloping hills and the expanse of green valleys there, however, it’s the best representation of my local landscape I can find.
I often struggle with drawing thick bushes, trees and the abundance of vegetation in general. It can be abstract, but it also has to be representative of reality. Finding the right balance between the level of abstraction and realism in drawing landscapes never comes easy to me.
When working on these 360° studies, I used thumbnail sketches to quickly work out the composition. It helped a lot but, at the same time, when realising a sketch into a drawing, I wasn’t always successful in sticking to the composition and proportions I originally envisioned.
As to mark-making, I tried to experiment a bit and depict the texture of tree bark, the smooth surface of solid stone, and so on using different techniques. For instance, holding the pencil almost horizontal on paper gives a very soft and distributed mark. I enjoy being responsive to the texture of the object I’m drawing, it’s as if I’m touching the object with my fingers.
Exercise 3 in Project 2
NadiaDrawing 