Week 4: Landscape study: View over Bradford

The intention of this weeks study was to work with expressionistic techniques. The city and landscape has a lot of patterns in it, made out of the houses, trees et etcetera. The key in expressionistic painting or drawing it to capture the essence and the feeling of these patterns without spending hours on drawing every single house or tree in view. I therefore chose to work with graphite stick, dry pastels and ink and a brush. These tools is easy to cover big areas of the paper and does not allow tiny details. Speed and a clever mind is the key to success here.

The three first attempts was made with the graphite stick. The first attempt, here to the right, is fairly detailed. This piece was more of an experiment where I tried out different ways to capture the trees in the distance and the houses in the front. I didn't feel so satisfied with the high level of details and the time I spent on it. The perspective is fairly good.





On the second try I sped up more and let the hand move faster over the paper to cover more. The level of details is less, but the I the contrast and the key details such as the church tower to the left I put in that stands out in the less detailed mess that is trees.


The final try was much like the previous, I continued on the same path and tried to work more with the values.

 Made this piece with a black soft pastel crayon. I changed the medium since I felt that I've done what I could the graphite stick. I love the messy and very expressionistic feel of it. The values and use of lines to break things up.

 The final three images of the landscape study was made with indian ink and brush. This piece was the first try with the new media and I did some experimenting with painting with only a little ink on the brush. In that way I managed to put in some nice textures in the trees and in the buildings. The outlines was however made with a fresh load of ink on the brush to get the solid black shapes of black.

 Out of the three studies in ink this is my favourite. Its the second try and I have grasped the technique fairly good to make the most out of it. Another reason that I think makes it so good is the good use of lines, black boxes (the roofs of the buildings) and the textures messiness of the trees in the background. The houses also shows the perspective in a good way with their clean lines.

A final attempt with more buildings. Tried to work on another technique for the trees and to explore further with the ink and brush.