Back to Artistic Pursuits —- Lesson 5: Landscapes.
I sketched a simple landscape while we discussed some basic principles, like how objects in the background are smaller and less detailed while objects in the foreground are larger and more detailed. To demonstrate this, I drew some distant mountains covered in trees. I merely sketched some half circles to hint at the shape of trees on the mountain. I sketched another tree in the middle ground, slightly larger and with slightly more detail, the line of a branch or two. Finally, I drew a much more detailed tree in the foreground, more branches and some individual leaves being discernable.
We looked at a Childcraft book “About Places” and studied different landscape places around the world —- with views of bays, The Grand Canyon, cityscapes and got sidetracked many times reading the words alongside the pictures. I finally got us redirected and turned the boys loose to draw their own landscape.
Sidney’s rendition is more of a waterscape in ink . . . . . .
Lincoln turned out 4 or 5 pictures, but I am only going to show one . . . .
Note his “vanishing point” that is the source of the stream, his antelopes footprints and the legs of the second antelope that ran off the page to the right. I love his drawings. They reveal the workings of his mind in ways I don’t get to see otherwise.
Prairie Sings 