Chapter 7 Drawing the Landscape

I looked online for drawings by Van Gogh and chose these two.

I like dthe smaller one best but wasn't sure if it was a bit too small to work with, so I settled for copying the larger picture.

I then decided to have a go at the smaller picture and was quite pleased with the way it came out.

I looked at the internet again for pictures by Hockney and Van Gogh.  I love David Hockney's pictures of the wolds.  I travel along these roads quite frequently and it is just like driving through one of his pictures.  I love the texture of Van Gogh's paintings, you just want to touch them.  I have also added two pictures by local artists who I think use line very well.  Ian Mitchell views of the Yorkshire coast are all done on the computer and are lovely and simple in their design.  Rebecca Vincent does Monotype and this one again reminds me of the wolds.  The trees are another Hockney which he has adjusted on the computer.

For my own painting I had chosen the tiny picture of a Tuscan landscape with cypress trees and farmhouse.  However, when I came to do the painting I had put the picture away in a safe place and couldn't find it so had to chose another one.  I was half way through painting that one when I found the first one.

I chose the larger picture as I particularly liked the colours.

I am not very good at painting pictures but I referred back to module 1 about painting the outlines straight onto the paper and not using pencil.  I made a small mark in the centre of the page to position the buildings.  I am reasonably pleased with my effort but I am not sure Van Gogh would approve.

Module 3 Chapter 6

Torn Papers

I started this chapter by making a small pile of torn papers using different types of paper, newspaper, brown paper, pre-painted paper, tissue paper and kitchen towel.

I then pasted these onto three pages of my sketchbook.

The first page I covered with a wash of watered down ink.  The second page I covered with a pearlescent ink that I hadn't watered down.  I was quite surprised to see the pattern on the tissue paper still showed through.  This would have been better thinned down.

For the third page I took your advice and tried writing ink.  The top of the page is undiluted and then I did the rest of the page with water added.  I really like this page, it has a mystery to it.

I made two viewfinders although I have used them before I could only find a very small frame one, I suspect I have accidentally cut the others up to make printing stamps.  I then chose some photographs and magazine pictures of landscapes.

I chose a lovely view of Lake Garda to trace.

I then made a collage of it using mostly magazine papers.  I should have put the blue water under the buildings when I glued them down, then the white patch at the side would have disappeared and the perspective on the buildings would have been right.  I had all the pieces laid out at the side of my paper and I picked them up in the wrong order.

I then did a series of three pictures in which I changed the colours.  The piece on the right isn't quite the right size, it should have more buildings on it, or maybe the one in the middle should have fewer.  I wondered if I was put off by the size of my paper being smaller on the last piece - a good excuse.  I could also have varied the height of the buildings a bit more. I then tidied them up and put them in my sketchbook.

This was an interesting chapter, I haven't done much collage like this before and I was reasonably pleased with how they turned out.  They are a bit 'impressionistic' which takes me into the next chapter quite nicely.