Drawing Lesson - Part 2

The Finished Painting in my Journal - notice that I combined the 2 rocks in the background 

Now that you used your pencil to size up what you want to draw, you have some great information about the dimensions of your landscape (see Drawing Lesson, Part 1).  What I love about organic structures such as mountains, trees and flowers is that you can manipulate them to work for you.  They can be enlarged, made smaller or even moved to different places in your painting.  Man-made structures are a little bit trickier.  Buildings, people, and animals need to look proportionally correct or they may give your painting an odd look.

This is what I did with my drawing of the views I had while on the Oregon coast.  I actually drew and painted this journal page while recently on the plane  to Maine for our family vacation.

The Proportions are still the same.

Using my pencil to measure the rocks

Here is one more helpful hint about using a pencil to get your dimensions correct:  you can divide or multiply the size depending on how large or small you want the objects to be in your painting.  For instance, if I had wanted to increase the size of those rock off the Oregon coast, I could have drawing them twice as big using my pencil to help with the measurement.  Or I could have made them 1/2 the size.  If you do this, make sure to treat all the elements in the drawing the same.  So if I doubled the size of the distant rocks then I would have also doubled the size of the little house as well as doubled the size of the nearer rocks.