Adventures In A Painted Landscape

I’ve been out sketching again. At the moment we’re having a lot of sunny but cold days and I’ve been finding there’s just enough time to sum up a scene in pencil before going completely numb. The Howgills continue to elude me. They have fabulous shapes that resemble sleeping forms (I think human, but they’re famously supposed to be elephants) but they’re so huge it’s difficult to know how to fit them into a picture without losing the mass. The sketch below was made in a lonely valley that I love. I’m trying to learn its shape and work out what to do with it. The second sketch was just capturing a lovely moment sitting on a strip of a path somewhere very high up in the sun.

'sleeping' form in pencil, A6

on Crook fell, pencil A6

Sketches made at the side of the road, face flushed and heart still hammering away, might look like this:

above Dent Head Viaduct - A6 pencil sketch

Whereas sketches made after walking up a hill, steadily climbing at a gentler pace, can look more like this:

Garsdale from Winder - A6 pencil sketch

Now, I don’t think my experiment shows much difference in drawing style between the two so any sense of liveliness in the sketches must come from a response to the landscape itself, which is nice.

Today I rather by accident decided to look at the landscape upside-down (just by leaning over rather than any acrobatics!) and was amazed at how the colours seemed different and the shapes of the clouds and hills much more solid, with a great impression of depth. So the next experiment is to sketch upside down. If it’s any good I’ll attempt a painting as well.

Finally, here’s a painting created in the studio as a result of the first sketching session:

Painting of Dent Head By Night - oil on canvas, 9x12