This was not so much a walk as a Friday afternoon session at Whitchurch art group. The hall we use is set on the edge of the village and has windows on four sides – I thought this would be perfect for trying to get all four pictures done in one 2-hour afternoon session (allowing time for tea, chats and looking at each others’ work).

I started off with this view through the fence (foreground), over someone’s garden with greenhouse (midground) and away to the distant hills. I decided to work throughout this exercise in a fat Pitt drawing pen, the idea being that I wouldn’t get too bogged down with fiddly details. The pen was good for expressive sweeping marks, lovely scribbly hedges and dark patches for the “negative space” part of the trees; less good for the detail of the fence – but I think I’ve got enough of that in to convey the fact that it’s a fence casting shadows, so OK. Notice that I’m also trying to work my clouds in!

My next view was from the opposite direction, which was basically one half of a slate-hung cottage with an older stone building behind and a hedge in front. I have tried to note here the shadows (e.g. of the drainpipe on the wall) and the various textures, as well as get to grips with the perspective (i.e. lines leaning the right way).

The next view was effectively between both of the earlier views – I wanted to get the “procession” of roofs in. Again, I looked to notice tone (shadows) and make quick notes about the surface texture.

I went to the windows on the far side of the building; these have shrubs/trees growing right outside them, and I had hoped to be able to see the view behind through the foliage – but not to be, I’m afraid. So I turned to a photo on my phone of a recent stay at a rather crumbling but characterful old stately home near Penzance just which had started offering B&B as a means of paying its way – we stayed there recently, and I took a photo of my husband in the gardens in front of the house in late afternoon light – strong, dark shadows. The brush pen was great for the really dark darks, but a bit clumpy for mid- and light shadows so I think some of the bits of detail I did put in have become slightly unclear.

TAKE AWAY POINTS:

• I enjoyed the fast sketching – need to do lots more to get better at going “big picture” and getting down the main details
• I need to remember to step away part-way through a drawing and look at perspective – I am getting better, and slightly more confident, at seeing which way the lines lean when near to the horizontal (something I have struggled with and am still not 100% accurate), but I haven’t got that tapering into the distance, e.g. the house in the 4th drawing doesn’t taper, and I can see that clear as day now from my photo of it – need to get better at seeing it at the time!

This has been overall a fun if slightly frustrating exercise; fun because it was quite free, and frustrating because, whenever I thought I had a bit of time for cloud drawing, it seemed to be either unremittingly sunny or else the sky was a uniform greyish-white accompanied by rain in varying degrees. Often I would see an interesting cloud formation when I was on the way somewhere – so there has been some shameless drawing from photos, both mine and those of others.

Dramatic stormy clouds (other than the uniformly grey variety) have come from books – but I have chosen images which exemplify real dramatic scenes which I have seen to have a go at: the lowering clouds which seem to process over you into the distance (where it is still raining), but lit by a sunny moment; and the massive evening stormy cloud passing away, allowing light from a setting sun to show around.

I did both of these with a chunky 2B pencil – this was generally fine for the task, although I did struggle to get the darkest darks quite as intense as I wanted.

Wispy sunny-day clouds directly overhead have proven more of a challenge than you would have thought. These are generally darker towards the centre where the thickness is greatest. I had a go at using blue watercolour paint on a white ground to try and paint the cloud in as negative shapes, with variable success (see notes in A4 sketchbook). Then I experimented with different media over a blue watercolour wash (see here), where I found the most successful media were white and grey Conte crayons (lower left), and white gouache applied with a palette knife and my finger (right).

I was on the lookout for interesting composite cloud formations (as I had seen depicted in pictures by Alfred Munnings – see notes in A4 sketchbook and blogpost on a weekend in West Cornwall). These often seemed to appear towards late afternoon/evening – I snapped a couple of interesting skies and tried drawing them from my photos.

I was determined that oil pastels would be good for this rather dramatic sky taken from our car about to crest a hill. I tried an overlaying technique (loose darks first, then circular strokes with the white crayon – this linked with the Vila Celmins research, as this is the same stroke I used for my tree foliage – and then I repeated the circular strokes with a paper torchon). I became rather absorbed in the process rather than the outcome and the dark clouds on the right ended up a bit odd; but on the other hand I was quite pleased with the billowing quality of the lighter clouds on the left.

This was a quick 10-min sketch of a dramatic sky I saw as I walked through Tavistock to my art group meeting yesterday evening. The sketch is done with a huge chunky graphite stick which was new to me – great for big areas using the flat end, but also sharp edges for lines and emphasis. Enormously enjoyable!

We (my husband and I) went and stayed outside Penzance last weekend to take part in an event jointly organised by the Newlyn School of Art and the National Trust – we were trying to set a world record for the number of people painting along a stretch of footpath between Sennen and Land’s End – see photo of extract from the Daily Telegraph. We were each given a board to paint on, and this was backed in fluorescent pink; a drone went back and forward along the path, which we had to hold over our head as the drone approached – a very unusual method of counting!

It was a lovely day, with a brisk wind to blow one’s board all over the place and lots of scudding clouds in a blue sky – not to mention a choice all along the coast of stunning views, although naturally I chose to try the  Longships Lighthouse at Land’s End.

The surface of the board had been primed so this made for a very interesting watercolour painting experience – this was the medium I had brought for ease of carrying but, of course, the paint sat on the surface rather than being absorbed, leading to some rather unpredictable but fascinating effects. We had a great time! – here is my effort (note the clouds) and my husband holding up our paintings:

Whilst down there we managed some other arty activities, notably:

• Visit to Penlee Art Gallery in Penzance to see an exhibition of the work of Alfred Munnings and his contemporaries done whilst in Cornwall, mainly centred around the Lamorna group. I made some sketches of the way these artists had tackled the representation of clouds in their paintings – see notes in my hardback A4 sketchbook.
• Visit to the Kurt Jackson Foundation in St Just-in-Penwith to see his most recent exhibition based around Frenchman’s Creek. This was a real study in how to paint the same place over and over, and yet create a very different image every time due to variations in viewpoint, weather, time of day, tide, etc. A real chance to observe one professional artist’s methods of rendering massed trees and clouds, and also a study in the careful use of small areas of bright light to lift a picture – see again my A4 hardback sketchbook.

Along the road from us is an old Victorian cemetery – it stopped being used years ago and is now a blue-plaqued monument – but it has lovely old trees, some huge, largely untended, interspersed with rambling grassy paths and crumbling headstones, statues and mausolea. It is caught between the road and a steep embankment of the old railway line, so everything seems close-packed and tumbling over itself. Seemed like a good place to draw trees!

I set off with my large sketchbook, pencils, Conte crayons and water-soluble pens. No-one is ever in the cemetery so it was a bit creepy wandering around, and I was greeted joyfully by a black cat who became my constant companion. I eventually found a small clearing dominated by a fir tree and, behind it, a massive weeping birch. The sun was behind them so their edges seemed to be lit up – doesn’t show up terribly well in the photo which I took to try and capture the light, but the effect was much more marked to the naked eye, particularly as the sunlight trickled through the birch branches and leaves.

I settled down against the boundary wall, ably assisted by my feline friend who kept climbing over me, trying to get into my rucksack before finally deciding to use it as a bed, and batting at my sketchpad – this is my excuse for some rather random “jogged” lines.

The fir and the big background trees (which I think are sycamore) lent themselves to big gestural sweeps with the side of a broken Conte crayon, before working in the light/dark contrasts. The weeping birch and the laurel to the left of the fir tree seemed better represented by the water-soluble pens, which were good for the trailing curtains of branches of the birch and the strong individual shapes of the laurel leaves.

The overall effect feels much more lively than the sedate and elegant original. However, I think I have managed to catch the character of the different trees through my choice of media and the different marks that these encourage.

Reflections overall:

• Techniques used to distinguish trees – think I have covered this above, particularly the differing mark-making and the choice of medium
• Conveying mass of foliage and spaces between – the fir and background trees were depicted with big wristy sweeps with the side of a crayon. The birch and the laurel were drawn with pen; long trailing marks for the birch, short punchy marks for the laurel – then some water brushed over both in places.
• Light on different parts of the tree:
  • The fir was light around the edges in many places (I left these fairly airy) with some heavy shadows which I tried to indicate using negative drawing – didn’t do this everywhere, just enough to give the viewer the idea of how it went
  • The birch I found tricky – the light shining through it, especially towards the top, made it look quite ethereal, and I tried suggesting this by leaving spaces. I have to admit it looks slightly odd; but I did look carefully and really couldn’t see the dark background between branches due to the intensity of the reflected light from the myriad leaves – so maybe I should have found a different way of representing all those leaves (watercolour and much thinner pen? – not sure, feel this might quickly become overworked…hmmm..)
  • The laurel was almost universally dark apart from tiny patches of sunlight reflected off odd leaves – I have tried to indicate this using colour (yellow)
• Have I selected and simplified? I think in this drawing I have been forced to by the sheer weight of foliage – I’ve manages to look at patterns in the foliage without getting hung up on each individual leaf.

I want to try using the Chinese brushes and ink more, so I decided to have a go at a weeping birch tree in my garden. This little tree is surrounded by maple and beech trees which have overshadowed and squashed it rather until the only way it could grow was out over the path, which it has in fact now done very markedly. We cut back some of the beech and maple around it this summer, removing one of the beeches altogether, so the little birch now stands in a bit of space and has thrived as a result, even though it is still wider than it is high because of its previous fight for light. My husband is threatening to trim the branches that overhang the path now, so thought I had better catch the shape for posterity!

My tutor suggested that I thought more about my support in this Part, so I laid down a light coloured wash underneath the drawing before starting in with the brush and ink. 

I think I have captured the unusually extreme shape of the tree well, and the Chinese brush was the perfect tool for those lovely elegant sweeping branches; the leaves were trickier, so I have just suggested their shape at the ends of a couple of the branches. I think I spoilt it slightly by trying to fill in a bit of the contrasting dark of the wall and shadow behind – possibly a different medium was called for there – and I definitely think the wash could have been a little more intense – it is literally wishy-washy. Live and learn.

I also tried a small study of a section of mossy trunk of the apple tree outside our morning room window, which I stare at every day.

Again, I used the Chinese brush and ink, trying to follow the mantra I acquired from D.N. Naylor, 2016; Drawing Masterclass – Trees; Search Press Ltd, of SHAPE → FORM → TEXTURE; I am still terrible at getting sucked into fiddly details very early on which then throws the whole of the rest of the drawing out of kilter, so I am trying to hold this little formula in my head.

I’m getting better at controlling the darkness of the ink, and the point of a Chinese brush is absolutely lovely to draw with when you need a delicate line – but I’m still not always getting there, still quite thick and blobby sometimes, must remember not to have so much ink/water in the brush.

I love trees but they have never been my favourite thing to draw due to what has always appeared to me to be un-tackle-able complexity – I was always getting bogged down in finicky details and – dare I say it – not seeing the wood for the trees.

I did a couple of basic line drawings whist out on a walk (see a giant beech tree, above, which towered way above us), trying to keep it simple, before setting off to do some drawings as suggested in the text.

Results were variable, and I have to say that, at first, I couldn’t see the point of starting again each time, and wasn’t quite sure how to do the fourth suggested step about shading in foliage masses, doing side studies of foliage etc to help me..

After doing a few of these I decided to cut to the chase and just do all the steps on one drawing, although I confess I did sometimes miss out the “basic 

shapes” one, and it all started to make a bit more sense…..

I experimented a bit with mark-making to convey the essential nature of the leaves (rounded, spiky, clumped, single, etc) and now feel more comfortable with my basic formula for rendering a rapid sketch of a single tree:

• Look
• Rough measurement, e.g. twice as tall as it’s wide
• Light broken marks of basic overall shape
• Draw in trunk and a few branches that you can see
• Indicate leaf masses, and make shapes of individual leaves clearer at edges
• Quick check for light direction and darks

I say a rapid sketch……but to get a clear view of the hazel tree (above), which was growing at the base of the White Lady waterfall at Lydford Gorge in Devon, I had to sit on rocks just at the base of the waterfall, and was rather rudely asked to move on by a charming European gentleman tourist because I had been there “so long!” and he was waiting to take a photograph of the waterfall. I can’t think how the presence of a local artist in his picture would in any way have detracted from it, but there you are…..

I agonised for a while over the choice of material for this picture. Had the format been smaller (A4 or less) I think I would have gone for something I felt confident with, such as ink with a light wash. However, I had been asked to work on a large scale and, on looking carefully at my subject, the reflections in the curved metal were very slightly “fuzzy” and not always true, i.e. small dents in the metal caused various distortions and wobbly lines. I decided to go for Conte crayons, as they would give the varied and “un-crisp” lines I was after. I had originally intended to work just with the greyscale crayons and add a tiny bit of watercolour or ink wash for the blues, reds and greens; however, when I got to that stage, it felt more appropriate to stay with the crayons…so, another change of mind!

I have to say, I am really pleased with the outcome, it is better than I had hoped for or envisaged. There are of course lots of niggles – e.g. the lamp is not quite symmetrical despite my best efforts (I drew it in 2H pencil and rubbed it out about 15 times!!) – but I think the overall effect is striking and I hope it draws the viewer in to try and identify details. 

I was concerned that I had chickened out a bit of tackling my bete noir, perspective, but this image had other challenges thrown up by the convex surface, mainly because nothing was quite where you thought it would be. In several places, I found that the curvature really exaggerated the perspective, thus helping me out. A real learning curve! Terrible pun, apologies.