Wednesday, July 18, 2012

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.




6 comments:

Brook said...

love this lesson. very clear and helpful. thanks.

Damiane Lucas said...

Thank you for these drawing lessons, Jacqueline. I've been playing with watercolor on a Moleskine journal, and my washes are muddy-looking. Sigh.

Please continue to offer instruction/tips on your blog. I truly appreciate your help! Many thanks for your inspiration. Your journals are so very beautiful. What a treasure!

Jacqueline said...

Thanks Damiane, I never know if people come back and look at the comments I post but my suggestion to you is to get a color wheel and practice making analogous washes or colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. You should not get into trouble that way. I will be teaching an online color class next spring!

Unknown said...

Thank You for sharing... Beautiful Work. Just little things like the elbow locked make a big difference. Thanks again. :)

Amy Hauser said...

Jacqueline, I come back repeatedly to these lessons, and glean more each time! We loved (LOVED) your class at CREATE (Tutti Frutti Watercolors) and so wish we had also taken the art journal class the following day (although we had great fun in the class we did take that day...!) Your teaching style has helped me "get it". I am so sad that CREATE will not happen again.... please please let us know if you teach in the Seattle area; I'm also watching re: the Portland area. That's a bit of a hike, but we are not above a girl's weekend trip to the Rose City!

Jacqueline said...

Hi Amy, thanks for the comment. I am so sad - devastated about the end of CREATE! All the teachers are. I am considering doing my Columbia Gorge/Hood River week again. I'll let you know!