Bowles - Drawing Mentor 7-10: Sketching the Land Water and Sky, Sketching Plants, Sketching People and Animals, Sketching Buildings

Land Water and Sky

Welcome to Volume 7 where we will focus on the basics ofsketching the land, water and sky.

The ability to look at a scene, sketch it quickly, anddetermine if its balanced is a good skill to have; the key is knowing how to identifymajor features, shapes and tonal depth. This is important for all sketches butespecially for landscapes. Because very few small details are needed in thesesketches, the major features are much more important.

Sketching land features becomes simple when you realize thereare only a handful of things you need to know to be successful.

To begin with, land can be broken down into three maincategories, rugged mountains/rock formations, rolling hills and plains orvalleys. A landscape can contain features from one, two or all three of thecategories. Once the category of each land feature is identified, the nextstep is to determine the dominant ground cover. Typically itll either be a rockysandy terrain, vegetated terrain consisting of trees, shrubs and grass, or acombination of both. In simple steps, identify the shape of each landmass andsketch it, identify its covering and add the appropriate tone, and lastly,sketch any minor details that may be important.

Water comes in the form of rivers, lakes and oceans, or on asmaller scale, puddles and streams. Lakes oceans and puddles are very similar;the water is usually flat and reflects the image of whats around it. Thereflection can be broken and distorted depending on the number and size ofwaves and ripples or it can be clear as glass if the waters surface is flatand smooth. Rivers and streams can either flow relatively fast, in which caselines can be used to show its speed and direction, or they can flow slow andsmooth and be more reflective like a lake.

To sketch the sky there are two main things to identify. First,identify the tone of the sky. This will depend on the time of day. Second,check for cloud cover. There are two basic cloud configurations to know forsketching. Clouds will either be rounded and fluffy, or theyll be thin and wispy. Either the sky or the clouds will be darker depending on the type of clouds andtime of day, take note of which is darker and shade accordingly.

Once you have a handle on identifying the features of alandscape, making an accurate sketch should be fast and easy.

Each part of the landscape will now be discussed in greaterdetail.