I love working on location. But one of the things I’ve been working on this year is creating in my studio too. I love working on location and how you can “see” with all your senses, and how that informs the work. But when it is cold and windy, or when I am with family, a super-quick piece might be all I have time for.
So one of the easiest ways for me to segue into studio pieces is to be on location and to do a first piece on location. I don’t think of this as a study for another piece so much as a first, immediate reaction. This very quick sketch in a single pen and graphite pencil was done at Carmel on a recent afternoon.
I did this next piece at home soon after, my impressions of my walk and the day still fresh in my head.
I suspect this was a good place to stop. But when I walked by the piece a little later, I wondered what it would look like with an additional colored ink and some texture added in. So it morphed into this.
I learnt a good bit from this process and will be applying it to more pieces soon. It’s not only fun to do a piece over again with different tools and parameters, it also makes me re-live the moment, giving it a second life. And there’s different aspects of the experience and place to be captured in this second take.
Sketch Away: Travels with my sketchbook 
Very interesting and excellent suggestions. Thanks for sharing the process.
I love all the layers and colours in the final piece.
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Beautiful work! The colours look so fresh 🙂
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Really nice texture and rythem in your drawings. I too like to work on location, whenever possible.
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I like all the sketches, but the first one appeals because of its limited colour palette. The pen and graphite go so well together.
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Curious, when you did the sketches in your studio, did you work strictly from memory or did you also use your original sketch for reference? I am assuming a photo reference was not used. Love your work. Take care!!!!
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Belinda, I have all the above: my sketch and a bunch of photos taken on location. I try not to make exact copies of any of them, but i do have them around…in this scene, I didn’t need the photo reference, because nothing in it needs me to be exact. But if there were say a building in the background that needed to be recognizable i would’ve checked in with the photo to make sure i got proportions right…
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I love this series! I often struggle with drawing or painting something more than once. I feel like the first go was usually the one with the most “life” and my following sketches just get stiffer and stiffer, especially with wildlife sketching. I really like how you kept the exploration pretty constrained to get the basics across before diving into something more complex. I’ll have to try that in my sketching in this coming year. 🙂
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Tracey, it’s still a big struggle for me, especially when take 2 is in studio. But I’m determined to try and get better at it. Keeping the freshness of the first response is so hard!
I think It helps me to keep something constrained for a fresh response: tools, colors, time , whatever…
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