Jac’s 100 days of landscape

[Jack]

Hey Jo, thanks for stopping by – I do recognise you, the thumbnail from your portrait of the 3rd Dec caught my eye, so I checked out your challenge thread too.

Not quite the Peak District. Carmarthenshire, west Brecon Beacons. I don’t do it justice! My ultimate goal is to paint landscapes that capture just how beautiful it is here; paintings that couldn’t be of anywhere else. 🙂

[Jack]

Day 44 05/11/21 

• I got outside for a quick 30 minute sketch as the sun was setting – just enjoying being outside with a clear blue sky.

• I also attempted to match the palette and brushwork of one of Fenske’s trees – it’s amazing how effortless he makes it look! In his demos, he’s seemingly just swishing the brush about with little discernable intent, it’s amazing how much craft goes into it. I also like, on close observation, just how much colours he snuck into his shapes.

Practice Time: 2h

Day 45 06/11/21 

• I read a section of Carlson’s Guide To Landscape on linear perspective. Key takeaways were:
  • To imagine the foreground as a series of ovals, which become more foreshortened and smaller as they recede into the background. This is a userful exercise to actually do.
  • Details of all kinds reduce with distance, this is most notable in your treatment of edges.
  • To imagine a striped bag being placed over a tree. When seen from below, the stripes at the top would foreshorten, giving the a sense of height. The same can be applied to trees.
  • The vanishing point of roads indicate the steepness of the inclination of the plane it sits on.
• I also stretched another panel, as I definitely prefer it as a drawing surface.
• I watched the section of Russian Drawing on David’s Lips.
• I then did the assignment. Like before, I’m going to do a few more using the 3d model before moving on. I’m quite enjoying cast drawing, it’s motivated me to get some casts myself to practice from real life (next winter’s 100 day challenge, perhaps).

Practice Time: 2.5h

 

[Jack]

Day 46 07/11/21 

• I read the chapter on colour in Carlson’s Guide To Landscape Painting. Admittedly, I got almost nothing out of it except that painting isn’t about matching colours from nature but rather about using colour as a tool of expression.
• I worked for 2 hours on another set of David’s lips for Russian Drawing. It was definitely more difficult to ‘analyse’ the form in terms of planes without Iliya’s own work to reference. I’m going to do a few more, just to get some drawing practice in. Admittedly, I’m sort of just hoping this drawing will improve my landscape painting, without really knowing how.

Practice Time: 2h

[Jack]

Day 47 08/11/21 

• I read a chapter in Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting on trees, there was a lot of good information, a lot of which overlaps with what Kearn describes in the NMA course:
  • Trees get lighter and cooler as they reach out into the sky
  • There’s a linear gradation to value, too, depending on the direction of the light
  • To begin painting trees, first outline the contours with a dark wash, then mass in an approximate value/colour in a medium-dark (dark halftone).
    Having arrived at correct proportions, study how the branches leave the main trunk. The constant and gradual diminution of thickness, from tuna to tendril, is the most imprint factor in painting a tree.
  • Don’t make a tree ‘big’ by filling your canvas with it or placing it very prominently in the foreground (guilty!). By making the tree appear near, but still totally visible, the effect is smallness.  If you want big trees in the foreground, then only a segment should be visible and they should exit the upper part of the canvas.
  • A tree’s texture is determined by its edges
  • Remember that sky holes must be darker the smaller they are; same is true for a trees edges. The biggest sky holes delicate sub-masses of the three
  • Branches going away from you tend to be lighter than those coming towards you
• I also spent a bit of time working on more lips.

Practice Time: 2.5h

[Jack]

Day 48 09/11/21

• I watched Bill Perkin’s Painting Quickstart demo. It was a really useful reminder about the up-front planning and design that I too often neglect.
• With this in mind, I spent a bit of time creating a ‘matrix’ from a reference photo and a quick value study in wash to get the hierarchy down. I then did a lay-in before calling it a night, I’ll finish it tomorrow.

 

Practice Time: 1.5h

[Jack]

Day 49 10/11/21

• I finished off yesterday’s little sketch. The biggest difficulty I’m currently facing is correcting my mistakes – I simply don’t know how to make pictures better, short of just keep producing them. I might seek out tutorship of some kind, maybe as a present for finishing my 100 day challenge 🙂

MacPherson’s critique guide:

• How does the eye move through? I think the grass track moves the eye nicely up to the zig-zag of the mountains.
• Does the intended focus demand attention? What I liked about the scene was the big cool shape of the foreground contrasted with the warm sun-lit background. That does sort of dominate. There was a raking light against the tree and derelict barn, but I struggled to really make that pop.
• Is the composition balanced in terms of value, colour, shape? There’s a bit of ying and yang going on with the dark foreground vs light background/sky,  but I think it might be a little heavy-handed. But I’m only now realising that all the three major lines of the composition are in the same directions and distances apart.
• Do the edges describe the objects? It’s a bit small to get too into the edges, but I did try a bit of ‘diffraction’ to induce a sense of light in the background mountains.
• Is there one dominant idea? Yep, cold saturated foreground vs warm pastel background.
• Is there variety? I really struggled with variety, especially working from a photo I took. The green of the foreground was very monotonous and I struggled to inject variety into some of the shapes.

Practice Time: 2h

[Jack]

Day 50 11/12/21

It’s only taken me 11 days to realise I was mislabelling the dates as November, sheesh! Anyway…

• I spent a good few hours working on a little still life sketch of a jug. I continued until the light changed too much, then finished it up from memory, which I actually think yielded better results.
• I then got started on a pair of David’s lips for Russian Drawing, I’m going to crank out a couple more before moving on to the next section.

 

Practice Time: 3.5h

[Jack]

Day 51 + 52  13/12/21

• I only managed a few hours of drawing over two days, completing an additional two of David’s lips as part of the Russian Drawing course. I became increasingly unenthusiastic and slap-dash
• with each rendition, so time to move on I reckon!

 

Practice Time: 3h

 

Day 53 14/12/21

• I watched week four of Designing Your Landscape Painting – even as a total beginner, it’s insightful and useful (not to mention entertaining). I have to stop myself from just ploughing through them all. I’ll definitely rewatch them.
• I read a section in Carlson’s Guide To Landscape on Clouds. It’s a big weakness of mine, but I think it’s simply for lack of practice. Some info:
  • Four main types, cumulus,  stratus, cirrus, nimbus.
  • Sky is key to landscape as it determines the lighting conditions; quality and quantity of light.
  • Same principle of aerial perspective applies to clouds. Whites of clouds get warmer and darker (slightly) as they recede; shadows do the opposite.
  • Cloud arrangement should have a sense of ‘coming from somewhere’.

With that in mind, I tried to do a few small cloud studies – but I found working from reference to be really awkward.  My plan is to get outside and do some studies from life. I also did a small value sketch for another painting which I laid in, but didn’t finish (so I’ll wait until tomorrow to post it).

 

Practice Time: 2h

[Jack]

Day 54 15/12/21

 

• I made a bunch of painting pochade panels as per Todorovitch’s instructions from his portrait painting course – the plan is to use them with my new pochade box to paint from life more often.
• I worked for a couple hours on the sketch I had laid in on the previous day. What I liked from the reference photo I took – and it’s common where I live – is seeing the opposing hillside, a wall of distant hazy green, contrasted against the silhouette of foreground trees. I made a few attempts to capture this effect, but with little success. I don’t know hot make green look distant with it either turn to outright blue or just white. It never looks as it does in my mind. If there’s a day with decent weather, I might attempt it en plein air, see if there’s a difference.

 

Practice Time: 2.5h

[Jack]

Day 55 16/12/21

• I finished Carlson’s Guide to Landscape, the last few chapters on composition, line and movement, and drawing from memory, were interesting but didn’t offer too much actionable advice.
• I watched the section of Russian Drawing on David’s nose and spent a couple hours on two drawings. I abandoned the first because I thought I’d try a Conte pencil, but I found it too unwieldy and heavy.

 

Practice Time: 2h

[Kevin Dobler]

Jac,

Looking through your progress has been fun. I would suggest you try pushing the values in your work – landscape and other. At least from the photos here it doesn’t appear as if you often use the full range of values you have.
Btw, congratulations on so many days of study and posting!

[Jack]

Hello there Kevin, thanks for popping in and for the suggestions. I think the limited value range is due to my inexperience of colour mixing. I do alright with grisaille portraits (if anything, I have the opposite problem). Yet, I’m finding my still life paintings come out like cartoons, all garishly bright colours 🙂 so it is a good observation and sound advice. I’ve also purchased some decent lighting for my room too, as it’s currently quite dark – perhaps this might help!

 

Day 56 17/12/21

• I worked on the nose from the previous day a little bit, cleaning up a few edges.
• It was a lovely day, so I took a long lunch and plein air painted a little pochade of a scene I had previously painted from photo. I then worked another hour on it when I returned home.
  • I was reasonably pleased with the effort at first- but looking at it now, I’m not totally sure why, ha! Compositionally, I think it’s working. I’m liking the path and how it moves the eye into the picture. The bigness of the hill behind is the key motif, the thing that really interests me. Even the two strong verticals feel balanced by the horizontals, creating an “O” composition with the reveal between them. It was complete chance rather than intention, but I like the transparency of the thin winter hedging behind the tree – quite true to life I think.
  • James Gurney in his book Light and Color (which I just started) has a section on “the green problem”. I haven’t read it yet, but just knowing there’s a problem with green resonates with me! The background just isn’t working – I wanted to give it the effect of the strong sun hazing out the distant hills, but instead it looks more like fog. I just couldn’t crack it. I think I’m misusing white. What do green fields look like behind a veil of sunshine? No idea. I tried it in a more blue hue before scraping it off,  and then tried again with bluish-greens, without luck. I’ve picked up a book of William Wendt’s paintings as he mastered this sort of thing, so hopefully I’ll study some of his work to get closer to what I’m after.

Practice Time: 3h

[Jack]

Day 57 18/12/21

• I watched week 5 of Designing Your Landscape. Thoroughly enjoying it, you know that feeling of wanting to ration something good because you don’t want it to end? It’s like that.
• I’ve started reading Gurney’s Light and Color. It’s more of a visual dictionary than a how-to book, the sort of thing you can benefit from simply by reading a random page every day. My plan is to plough through it for useful and actionable gems, then go through it more slowly. I’m hoping it can help me sort some of my colour-mixing woes.
• It was a lovely sunny day so I thought I’d do another round of plein air painting, once again of a scene I’ve already painted from a reference photo. It was something of a disaster. I couldn’t get past the lay-in phase; colours were off, shapes were off, values were off. I scraped the thing down 3 times to restart and try again. It just wasn’t working for me. I’ll do a post-mortem and see what I can learn.Thankfully Kearns had said in the morning’s video that some days he went to paint and it was like he didn’t know how, which resonated with me throughout the day. If it can go badly for the pros, then I’ll take a bad day or two. There’s worse ways to spend your day then stood in the sun surrounded by beautiful nature 🙂

Attempt number 3 laying in the basic shapes/values.

 

Practice Time: 3h

[Jo Sheridan]

Hi Jac, I really empathise with your post today, and you have made me feel less fed-up with things – my 100 days seems to be making me draw worse and worse and I struggle to draw anything worth posting – today I did four heads, the first one was ok and the following three just went from bad to worse – the last one I had to completely scribble out because I couldn’t bear to look at it – my original plan had been to post the whole sheet with them all on – in the end I zoomed in on the first one.

If I’m being generous with myself I keep telling myself its because my standards are going up that I am getting more critical – I have gone back to basics to try and sort out form and proportion once and for all, but it is something I am finding really tough…

I admire the time you seem to dedicate to this every day and the calm way you explain your activities – when I’m fed up with mine you just get one word – I think today I just wrote “head” and fought hard to stop myself adding some exclamation marks… Anyway, I hope it helps you to know there are others of us out here who are pushing through the same pain barriers – tomorrow is another day 🙂 Jo.

[Jack]

Morning Jo, thank you for your words of support!

One strategy I use for staying motivated is framing the process as the goal, rather than the output. That’s why I always document the amount of time I spend practising each day. I know my track record of giving up on hobbies as soon as they become difficult. In my teens, I fantasised about being a talented guitarist playing on stage, cranking out hits before an adoring audience – these daydreams never included the countless hours of focused practice or hard work of any kind. I wasn’t interested in that part, I was supposed to be a natural after all! Unsurprisingly,  I never learned more than a few basic chords. It never occurred to me that I needed to enjoy the learning process above all else, of which making mistakes is a key part.

So it is with art too. Whilst you’ll never lose the desire to produce work that matches your expressive intent, know that time spent creating is itself a success. You’re challenging yourself every day when you could choose something easy and safe, who does that? Not many people, it’s actually quite special and worth praising. Your standards will definitely increase with practice – it’s a curse and a blessing. You’ll produce some good drawings along the way (like your eyes on day 38) but even today’s best drawings will seem not-so-good in comparison to what you’ll produce in a year if you keep practising. There’s an insightful description of this phenomena by Ira Glass if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a few minutes of your time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE

At least, this is what I tell myself 🙂 Thanks again Jo! Diolch yn fawr.

 

 

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Jack.

[Author]

Posts