Landscapes – Jamie's Sketchbook

Travel Sketching Class Takeaways

What a great class this has been, and I’ve learned so much!

The final demos I did a crazed, loose sketch-along for these locations in Melbourne.

My takeaways from the class are many. I vastly enjoyed this class and learned so much. I feel I significantly leveled up in my understanding of practical applications, as well as in how to manage my overwhelm in the moment. So helpful! Here are my takeaways:

The fastest, loosest sketch will still capture the memory and scene.

Start with 7 lines, 5 shapes, or 3 layers when overwhelmed by a scene. It will still be clear enough to know.

I really like shapes and do better with them—that’s my personal go to beginning a sketch.

Onward! Though the group run through of Sketchbook Design is no longer happening, I intend to do the class myself. It aligns nicely with my desire to get back to a daily sketchbook habit.

Three Layers

A simple approach of thinking of foreground, middle ground, and background while using watercolor pencils to color shapes, ink to add lines for definition, and a final layer of water or watercolor paint to finish the sketch. I’m quite happy with my results.

These are the sketches I’ve done for my assignments, famous locations. The first layer is indeed done with watercolor pencil, then some ink lines for definition. Then watercolor paint and water to add the finishing touches. I’d be very happy if my sketches when traveling looked so good. Most of these took me about 15 minutes to quick sketch, from photos. I was trying to work super fast, working along with the instruction video.

My three scenes, same ones I’ve done for the lines, and shapes exercises. Really happy with these. The ink lines are done with my Pentel Brush pen, and I really like it.

September 2021 Sketchbook

More lost days, then a little Bob Ross inspiration. Since I’m really keen to learn how to paint landscapes, I decided to try Bob Ross in watercolor. I learned a lot about how different oil paints are from watercolor! Ha!

Then a second attempt. Yep, I need a whole different set of techniques than Bob used!

These four were also my first “sequence of pages’ designed as a set for my Sketchbook design class.

I had a variety of subjects I knew I wanted in this sequence, including large landscapes, clothing sketches, and open line drawings. Originally I was going to group the clothes on one page, and the line drawings on another, since they were the same, but after this lesson I realized that it would flow so much better as a sequence of spreads if I broke the subjects up. So I therefore definitely needed a second large, contained landscape to complete the sequence.

I love it now! These pages seem to now tell a story in a much better way than they would have had I gone with my first method!

Additionally, I used the same date stamp and weather temperature as a unifying marker through the pages. I probably could have done more with headings or text, maybe even a color block with the clothes, though I do like the airy open white space I have. It is a nice contrast to the fully painted landscape pages.

I certainly learned a whole lot doing this! Now I just need to practice a lot more so it gets faster! Though all told, I think all four spreads took me about three or four hours in total, so really that’s not too bad at all.

Wrapping up September with a landscape of Piestewa Peak that I’m very, very pleased with. I even love the outrageous amount of white space!