Last night, while watching April of Monkey Mintaka livestream on YouTube, I spent some time drawing an unfamiliar subject – landscapes. She lives in the beautiful Lake District in the UK, and photographs the stunning scenery around her. Inspired by four of those lovely photographs (click through to April’s livestream video to see them), and this was my attempt at a quick rendition.
Since this was intended to be just a casual 90-minute session in my A4-size Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook*, I chose to divide one page into four sections using washi tape, rather than work full-size which would take more time than I had.
Having recently acquired a full set of Caran D’Ache Luminance* colour pencils (second-hand, lightly used), I wanted to test how they worked over a base layer of traditional gouache*. You can see the layout of the first picture in the image above, where I used my gouache paints to roughly work out which colours went where.
I did all four base layers one after the other, giving them time to dry. After the gouache had dried, it was worked over with multiple layers of pencil… here’s how that first one turned out…
I wasn’t too happy with the sense of depth, but will work on that in subsequent sessions… I think I did understand where I went wrong, but then tried to correct it with Black and Payne’s Grey pencils, which ended in it being a little muddled behind the trees in the mid-ground.
The second picture turned out better, since I applied the lessons from the first to it! Rather happier with this one, if not ecstatic!
There was further improvement with the third drawing, since there was a clear demarcation of foreground, middle ground and background…. it was much easier to choose colours and add texture to define each of these.
I do usually draw fairly literally – April was using different colours and I now wish I had been a little more imaginative too. That said, at least I just drew what I wanted to and didn’t think about what I ‘should’ do. Definitely need more of that in my life!
The last image was more of an urban scene… if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that drawing things like this is a once in a blue moon thing! Yet, I didn’t chicken out, persevered, and if I’m not totally happy with it, I’m not unhappy either! I will probably find an urban sketching class one of these days to improve my skills. It could be fun (she said, doubtfully!).
The Luminance pencils* performed beautifully… there is a wide range of colours, the pencils are beautifully soft and a pleasure to use. Best of all, they work well over the gouache paint – once the gouache is fully dry, of course!
A full set of Luminance pencils* is a good investment if you are a regular user of these materials, and if you just want to try a few colours, single colours* are also a good option – I had three or four already, and will now just replace colours as needed. Some favourites are already making themselves known, and I’ll share those when I do a video review on my YouTube channel soon.
There is also a Domestika course on coloured pencil sketchbook practice by Zoe Barker that I have not got around to doing yet… it’s on the list for 2023!!!!
Have you been drawing anything you don’t usually draw? Or tried these materials? Do let me know in the comments! Until next time – g’bye!
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