Based on a recommendation from Christine Nishiyama of Might Could Draw Today fame, I requested a copy of John Muir Laws’ fabulous book, The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling from my local library.
I LOVE this book - it’s lavishly illustrated and FULL of information, how-to suggestions, tips, tricks, and details all relating to honing your observation skills in nature and then capturing what you see in your nature journal.
Perhaps because of my experiments the other day with moving the horizon line around, I took note of a series of examples he provides about ways to show depth in a landscape.
The exercise at the top meshes several ideas together.
First, a circle flattens out as it recedes towards the horizon (note to self: practice more circles).
Second, warmer colours are more intense in the foreground and trend towards cooler, less intense shades toward the horizon.
Objects closer to you will overlap and obscure objects behind.
While I haven’t got the receding colour intensity quite right (and, as noted, my circles and ellipses are terrible), I can see how integrating these observations would help make a landscape seem more three-dimensional.
He offers several other suggestions on the same page (all of his examples are much better than mine), but once again I find myself a bit short of time at the end of a long, busy day. With more time I would have started again to see if I could improve my results and send that horizon waaaaaaaay off into the vanishing beyond.
The good news is, tomorrow’s another day and the book isn’t due back quite yet.
Actually, this is one book I would like to add to my collection. It’s so full of excellent ideas (and, lovely to look at - it’s just inspiring to open it up) I think I’d like to keep a copy around.
Do you have a favourite go-to art book? One you love to return to when in need of instruction and/or inspiration? I’ll try to remember all the way until tomorrow and do a post on the books Dad first started to use for reference when he was a child and which were still on his bookshelf right until the end of his life.
**Obligatory message about those links… Should you follow an affiliate link to Amazon and happen to buy a book over there, they will send me a few pennies for thoughtfully pointing you in their direction.**