Winter lines

Pencil in Moleskine, 21x24cm

My journey into the countryside left me with plenty of photos and sketches. The weather was sunny and cold for a good deal of my stay and so I was running around outside for a bit, soaking up not only fresh air (well, too much pig farming around for it to be really fresh) but also plenty of winter vistas, glistening and hazy low sun over fields, bushes and woods.

Pencil in Moleskine, 21x24cm

One of my sketching comfort zones is clearly the one that seeks out horizon lines, and intersecting fields - my sketches are still somewhat minimalist - I need to remind myself to include more value and shade. But all the same, I am beginning to like the hasty marks left in the sketchbook - it had to be less than five minutes or otherwise I wouldn't have felt my fingertips any longer. It's funny how the warm and nondescript West Coast Scotland winters have wittled down my tolerance for cold.

In any case, here are some sketches - in pencil, in felt pen and graphite, and the last one with a bit of colour wash included to begin to add some winter colours... which will be the next topic.

Felt pen and graphite in Moleskine, 21x12cm

Pencil and Neopastel ii in Moleskine, 12x21cm

I had begun to name the sketches, and - since most of my art thinking happens in English rather than German - did so with English titles, but they just feel wrong in this case. Funny one, that one.

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