10 Day Landscape Sketching Challenge: Embrace The Simplicity Of The Pencil

1. Introduction: There's hardly any time for me to be creative. I feel like my life is on a roller coaster that I wonder if I can just slow down to observe what's around me. Do you feel this way, too? Creativity helps us to slow down, and I personally enjoy being slow to observe people and nature around me, to just wonder and be intrigued by the little changes that happens around me. And this is when I usually go for a walk or reach out for my sketchbook. And sometimes it's a joy to combine them both. Hello, I'm Suzanne. I'm an artist and art tutor. This class is inspired by my walks and the sketches I produced during that time. During this class, I will introduce you to different techniques of sketching using just a pencil. I would also like to introduce you to the sketches of the great master Vincent Van Gogh. I am highly inspired by his sketches, and it is just a joy to see the different types of lines he used to create marks on paper. Then we will embark on a ten day landscape sketching challenge where we will practice lots of techniques that will help you to sketch with confidence in future. At the end of this course, I hope to encourage you to start using a sketchbook just for your personal joy. These pencil sketches are also a great way to get back into sketching. If you've had a break and is not sure where to start. If you're an experienced artist or a painter who loves using color, these exercises of just using a pencil to create value sketches can be an essential part of planning your painting. No matter what stage you're at, I hope that this sketching challenge helps you find your way into creativity. This course is for absolute beginners, as well as anybody who would like to start keeping a sketchbook. The landscape references that I provide in this class are quite simple with easy to tackle shapes, and I hope that this will help you to relax and enjoy markmaking without being too overwhelmed by complicated scenes. 2. What Will You Learn: I believe that landscape sketching is a great way to observe the world around us. It is a great way to enjoy connecting deeper with nature, and it has been quite therapeutic in my personal life, as well. Sketching is also a way to record scenes or make marks on paper. Or it can also be a way to let out pent up energy and frustrations of a busy day. A quiet walk with my dog is something that I enjoy on a daily basis. Also enjoy carrying a little sketchbook and a pencil with me. This has given me the opportunity to sketch wherever I am. I also enjoy clicking photographs of the scenes that I would like to come home and sketch. And sometimes I like to just curl up on my sofa or just stay in my studio to quietly sketch before I finish off the day. This class, I would like to encourage you to start sketching in your comfort areas. It doesn't have to be outside or doesn't have to be on a large scale. It can be quite small scale just for your personal joy. And to make that happen, I'd like to show you some techniques that you can practice and maybe carry along and sketch in future as well. During this course, we will be sketching ten different landscapes, one for each day, if you please. And while sketching, I'd like to demonstrate some fundamental techniques such as how to hold a pencil or composing a drawing and leaving out and emphasizing some of the elements in your drawing using light and shadow and creating an illusion of depth in your sketches. For the project, you may complete just one of these landscapes. Or you can even come up with your own landscapes. Something that you might be inspired by your own work. Please feel free to share at least one of your sketches, inspired by this course. 3. Suggested Materials: Let's look at the materials that we need for this class. We are going to keep it very simple. These are all the materials that you need and nothing more. All you need is a fob pencil. An eraser, a sharpener or a knife to sharpen your pencil and a sketch sketchbook can be of any size. You can keep it as small as a six, if you like to carry it around, or if you want to practice techniques and you want to keep it slightly larger and A five is perfect. Here I'm using an A five sketchbook, which I've already started to fill in with a few sketches from my walk. I'd also like to show you how you can sharpen your pencil if you're using a knife or a blade. I'd like to sharpen my pencils quite long like this. This is because I can hold the pencil in different ways when I have a longer nib. When I sharpen with a pencil sharpener, it usually gives me a very short nib and sometimes that restricts me from holding the pencil in different ways. Let's have a look at how I like to sharpen my pencil. Like you can see here, I'd like to sharpen it with a knife, making the nib nice and long. H. Once I get a considerable amount of length for the nib, I would then just simply go on and sharpen the end a little bit. I'm aware that this is quite fragile at this stage, especially if you're using a four B or a six B. It's really easy for them to snap. I'm going to be really gentle shaving off a little bit of the lead from that pencil, making a nice fine point like that. 4. Benefits Of Using Sketching Pencils: I the pencil that I'm using here is a four V pencil. You can either use four B or six B pencil or even an eight B could work really well. Good thing about these type of pencils that you can create a light as well as a dark line with the same pencil without having to keep changing your pencil for the darkness and the lightness. If you hold the pencil really softly and move it across the paper in a very soft manner without applying much pressure, you are able to get a very light shading. Or a very light line like this, you can apply a little bit more pressure to get darker lines, which is not possible with an HB pencil. You can also vary darkness and the lightness in one line just by controlling the pressure. You can start off really dark by giving a lot of pressure on your pencil, as you go along, you can lighten the pressure gently lifting off the pencil to get a very light line as you go along. You can do the same with shading as well. Let's say we start off really light. And then slowly, I'm going to build pressure until I get a really dark shade. You can do the same, you can go the other way around as well, so you can start with really dark and then let's lighten it out by slowly releasing the pressure, making my pencil hold really light and airy to get this variation. You can also overlap to create even more darker areas, which is one thing I like about shading pencils that you can layer it and create darker areas if needed. Let's do some cross hatching. Let's do a cross hatching, which is much lighter as well. I can still apply pressure over it and create a few areas with darker shades as well. Feel free to explore the strength of darkness and the lightness of your pencil and practice moving from dark to light. Or from light to gently building up the darkness, whichever way works for you. The four B pencil is that it's four times black or six B says it's six times black and HB is a hard and a black. There's not enough blackness as you would see in a four B. 5. Inspired By Vincent Van Gogh: I'd like to show you examples of the drawings of the artist Vincent Van Gogh. I am absolutely inspired by his drawings. Most of these are using pen and ink on graphite. Although we are only using pencil, I thought it's a good idea to just look at the different types of lines that he has used in his landscape sketches. You can see how intricately worked sketches these are and the way he has used lines in different angles to create the texture or the impression of foliage on the trees, grass, the little dots and dashes that combine to create the impression of the landscape that we see here. I also like the way he has used hatching or cross hatching. He has also used very thick or very heavy and lighter lines as well, and this has created a sense of depth in his sketches as well. Although we are only using just a pencil for our project, it is a great idea if we can be inspired and use some of these lines in our sketches as well. We're going to practice some of these lines. You can use one of these reference pictures as your guidance to copy some of the lines from the great master's work. So just to copy and practice a few lines from Van Gogh's sketches, I am going to start off with some heavy lines that eventually transform into lighter ones. I'm going to start with short heavy lines like these that Van Gogh has used in his sketches. I can even change the angle of these lines to create movement. It could be something like grass or a meadow where the wind is blowing and he wanted to show movement of the grass. He has used the lines in different angles. Let's try that as well. A few shorter lines as well, just to create texture of the grass. This is something we would be using a lot in our sketches as well. I'm also going to incorporate some lighter lines. I have been using heavy lines all this while, going to move into some lighter lines. Then I can space the lines a little bit further apart just to show a sense of depth in this meadow here. Then as it comes to the foreground or nearer to me, I can even use heavier lines to make really dark shapes and lines. Let's try drawing a tree that we can see in his sketch. But just to get the shape of the tree, I'm going to use really light lines to create the shape of the tree around that trunk and then I am going to use a few heavy light lines again. I can even include a little bit of shading here just to show depth. I'd like to have some darker areas in the foliage over here. I'm going to start shading a little bit with my pencil for that, I am using the pencil like this, holding the nib flat onto the paper. I also like to use my fingers to smudge my pencil lines a little bit just to create a soft outcome. Now I'd like to place a few more lines on top of this. Although I'm highly inspired by Van Gogh sketches, I don't want it to look exactly like Van Gogh sketches. I just want to use these sketches as my inspiration and maybe incorporate some of his techniques into my sketches as well. Let's also try the rocks that you can see in this sketch here. Just creating the shape of the rock over there, and then I can add in a few lines or even shading to create the dark and light. So this is how Van Gogh used his slins and I've tried to combine my style and be inspired by some of his lines. I really enjoyed looking at his sketches and copying a little bit of his sketch. I quite like the way Van Gogh used to say lines. I'd also like to use a little bit of shading as well to create my sketches. In this class, I'd like to show you how I am going to combine these lines as well as some shading techniques to create sketches of landscapes. 6. Practice Markmaking: So now let's look at some markmaking with my newly sharpened pencil. As I was saying, with a nib this long, I would be able to hold my pencil in different ways to create texture. One of my favorite ways to hold the pencil is what I call the grab and hold. I grab the pencil like this, put a pointer finger near the nib like that, and I just like to hold the pencil quite flat. This just gives me really flat or thicker lines, which is really great for shading or creating heavy texture. Especially if you're using a four B or a six B pencil, you should be able to get really dark or light lines. Let's try creating some variation in lines. I'm going to create really heavy or dark lines like that. Then I can reduce my pressure and create lighter texture as well. That's one way of holding my pencil. Another way is to hold it normally, but a little bit farther away from the nib. When we write, we normally hold it quite close to the nib so that we can gain control over what we are writing. Whereas with drawing, we don't really need as much control, so we have the freedom to hold it a little bit away from the nib. And this kind of helps us to create big shapes. It also helps us to move our arm instead of just the wrist. I always like to have my wrist not resting the paper, and that gives me more freedom, more space to move around, to create large shapes when needed. Let's practice drawing some really big long lines, vertical lines, and then we can go on and try horizontal lines. Where our wrist is not resting on the paper, it is lifted off and our whole arm is moving, giving us lots of freedom to make really bold pencil lines. You can also try light as well as heavy lines. Heavy lines by pressing a little bit harder on the paper and light lines is when you just gently move your pencil across to paper like that. Now, if this is quite therapeutic for you, I would encourage you to continue creating different types of lines if you like. It doesn't have to mean anything at this stage. It's just playing around with lines at this stage. 7. Project 1: Let's sketch our first landscape. This is a very simple landscape and here we're only going to look at shapes and how to place them. In this landscape that we're looking at, I can see there's a cluster of trees and bushes on the left hand side, I'm just going to mark them out over here. I'd also like to frame our landscape. Just put a rough outline around so we know where to place the elements. Again, I'm just going to mark out the cluster of trees and bushes on the right hand side. On the same line, we've got a few trees. This is a winter scene as you can see, which means trees don't have any foliage. I'm just going to use very short lines and very light lines to create the lines for the branches. Because the landscape that we're looking at has a lot of silhouettes or darker shades rather than any shadows or details, it is easier to tackle these than trying to create more detailed texture of the trees. The other tree just right next to that tree. Just going to add a few branches, again, light lines at this stage. This also gives me the opportunity to erase if I think it's not the right kind of lines that I was looking for. Whereas if you had made a drawing quite dark initially, then it's not as easy to erase as well. Okay, so I got the structure of the tree. I'll come back to it with a few more details later on. There's another tree over here. It's more bushy, so I'm just going to use my pencil this way to create a very light fuzzy texture. I think I'm not going to add the fourth tree because I like to keep an odd number of trees rather than an even number. I just feel that is more exciting to look at. I'm just going to finish off with a few scruples to create the illusion of shrubs nearby. So you can see how it's slightly different from the reference picture we're looking at. I'd like to change it a little bit depending on how I'd like my end result to be. And I've chosen to keep only three trees instead of the four trees I can see in the picture, very hazy landscape in the background. It's quite foggy. The top of that landscape is very hazy compared to what is nearer the ground. So I'm going to create a very light shading. And I also like to smudge it a little bit, so it's not standing out so much. And I'll finish off with a much lighter shading nearer the ground. I'm now going to finish off the cluster of trees and shrubs that is in the foreground. I can see here that it's much darker compared to the background. I'm just going to create darker lines, pressing harder into my sketchbook with the pencil. I like to build my darkness step by step. Instead of going completely dark in the first go, I'd like to build a few scribbles just to create texture of the foliage there. Then once I'm done with that, I can add on some more darker areas as and when needed. I quite like the process of extensive scribbling like this because it's quite therapeutic for some people and for others, it really helps to concentrate. No matter what group you are in, I hope you enjoy scribbling and creating this beautiful texture for the landscape. Now, I'm just going to add in some few darker details. Maybe suggestion of tree trunks, branches, I can keep going. I think I need to make these areas quite darker because they're completely in the shadow. I'll leave a few areas that are a bit lighter, so it's not completely a dark shape. It's about creating that variation of dark and light in this area. Now, for some finer details of some shrubs, because it's winter, there's fewer foliage. I would need to add a few more extra lines just to show the texture of the winter foliage. If this photograph was taken during the summertime, this would look very different. Let me darken these trees as well now. So just adding some extra branches. And for the smaller or the finer branches, I can create a very fuzzy texture as well. It doesn't have to be individual branches. I'm going to create a rough texture of the branches over here. You can either hold the pencil the normal way or you can even grab and hold like this with the flat end of the pencil touching the paper. I personally like the texture that it creates when I hold the pencil like this. But if you're uncomfortable, you can always hold it the normal way. Adding a few fuzzy lines, just quick lines for the finer branches, a few fuzzy lines for the shrub that's underneath that tree, and finally, the last tree, the smaller one. Then I'm going to finish off with a little bit of a texture of shrub over here. I can even smudge it so it's not standing out. I also like to add some finer texture in the background, maybe just a suggestion of a few trees in the background, like how we can see in the reference picture. Be it's so foggy, I can't really see what's happening in the background, which is fine. I'm going to leave it like that. Just creating a sense of depth with maybe just a very soft line. At the same time, I don't want to make it too dark over here because if I make it dark, then it would look as if it's in the foreground. So anything to the background, we're going to leave it lighter. Anything in the foreground would be a little bit more darker or in some cases more details as well. Now let's come to the foreground here. Just going to depict some shadows so you can see there's light shining through those shrubs. So I'm going to leave those areas. Without any shading. Just looking at the orientation of those shadows, it's angling this way. I'm going to move my pencil lines this way as well. Then I'm going to start shading a bit more darker on the right hand corner. I'm just going to slightly turn the page like this so I get the angle correctly. Long swishy lines to finish off the shadow. I also like to give a little bit of texture for the foreground. Maybe add just a few lines, dots and dashes, just to create texture of the grass or the open ground in front of us. Let's add the shadows of those trees as well. Right in the foreground, I can even add these really short lines just to create texture of the grass in the foreground. A This just remembering what we saw in Vango sketches where he used the short lines to create texture of the grass in his sketches I quite like that idea. Now, if you look at this sketch, we have eliminated the sun in the background and the shadow in the sky as well, mainly because I thought it's a good idea to concentrate on how to create texture of the foliage. 8. Project 2: Next landscape is something very similar to what we did for the first one. In this landscape, we're going to look at mainly the shadows on the shrubs and how they are placed. In the photograph, I quite like the way how the shrubs are to the left hand side, where you can make that the focus. Then have a little bit of the landscape in the background as well. We're going to see how we can show that these shrubs are in the foreground and how we can make the rest of the landscape in the background without giving too much details. I'll start off by adding the line at the far end or at the background. Start by putting in that line that divides the landscape in the foreground and the one in the background, that's at the far end over there. From there, this is where the shrub is. It's always good to lightly mark where the shrub or each object in your landscape goes. That's where the shrub is. Once I know where they are approximately, then I can begin to add in a little bit more details to bring out the shape of the shrub. I'm not really going to worry too much about the sky, which looks rather plain in the reference picture. I'm just going to concentrate on the shrub. I think I would like my shrub to be at least this tall. I've marked it with just a few lines just to suggest where the shrub is going, and I'm going to add a few squiggly lines to bring out the shape of the shrub. All right. Now that's the shrub behind. The next shrub, which is a little bit darker on this side, is the one that is in front. I'm going to use slightly darker lines compared to these lines that I've used before. Let me finish that off. Now, if I squint my eyes in the reference picture, I can see how this area is nice and dark and I'm just going to mark that out now. It makes a huge difference if I can mark out the darkest shadows, the deepest shadows. And it's always a good idea to squint your rice so that you don't see a lot of details. At this stage, we're only concentrating on the shadows and the highlights. Now, I'm trying to compare the two shrubs. This one's definitely lighter because there's a lot of light falling on the shrub, and this one's slightly darker color, especially with the color of the leaves as well. This is more yellow if we were to use color, but because we're only using um, pencil, we need to think in terms of light and dark to create that sense of depth in the sketch. I feel that this shrub is a little bit more slightly more darker than the shrub behind it. You can even use your fingers to smudge. So you get a very soft outcome as well. And again, within this shrub, I can see slightly darker areas. If I squint my eyes, I can see that. That is definitely darker. So I'm just going to add a bit more darker areas. You can see how I'm holding the pencil like this. It's a bit like using a brush where you are not entirely in control of what you're doing. So the really dark area just going to press down and create that really dark area at the bottom of the shrub, I sort of follows along over here as well, those shadows. I'm just going to try and create a little bit of roundness or depth into those shrubs over there now. There's a bit of shadow here as well on the other shrub that is behind this one. So in this sketch, I feel that it has helped me greatly because I've looked for the darker shadows first, Mark them out, and then I'm going to look for the less darker shadows. So that's the darkest area. Just outside that area, I can see an area where it's a little bit lighter but not as bright. So I'm going to create that tonal variation from really dark to slightly lighter and then finish off with just a few extra lines for texture like that. Let's do the same sort of technique in these areas as well. So that's really dark area over here. And I've got this area that is not so dark. That's the mid tone area, and then we are moving outside that area where it's a lot more lighter and you can see my pencil lines are a bit more lighter at this stage. Almost like little squiggles in some areas, leaving that white as well. I can see because there's bright yellow leaves on this side, and then there's a little bit of greenish color on this side. I feel when it comes to gray scale, if you think that in gray scale, I feel that the green is slightly darker than the yellow area. If I've left that as almost white with little scribbles in it, I can create a slightly darker tone for the green area over here, and that way I can get that variation in the shrub over here. Just to finish off just a few more variations of light and dark. It's always good to stop and look back at what you've done and then you can make a decision of where you want it to be darker. Sometimes if you're looking into your reference picture too much, you get lost in looking for the dark and light. This stage where I've marked out everything, I'd like to start looking at my reference picture. Now look completely at my sketch and think, how else can I make these two shrubs look more rounded? It might be just a few tweaks here and there that could make a huge difference to making the shrub look more rounded. Okay. I think that looks okay for now. I'm going to add a few details in the foreground, this tall grass that is sitting at an angle to the shrub. I think it's sitting at this an angle. The shrub is like this and the grass grows in this angle and I'm just going to try and add some long lines to create the texture of the grass that I see. It's a much lighter color compared to the shrub in the background. I'm just going to add only a few lines at this stage. At the bottom, I'm going to add slightly darker just to show the green color and then finish that off with some rough lines to show the texture of the grass. Just to depict the ground, I'd like to use these horizontal lines. I can even smudge it because I quite like the gray scale. Creates a nice atmosphere to the whole sketch. Now let's add some details in the background. We've got this little hill a little green hill full of foliage. There's a nice red shrub right in front over there. Again, that's not really a focus, so I'm only going to create those shapes and then maybe do a very hazy shading just to create the mood. I don't want that hill to stand out. I'd like it to just get absorbed into the background. But at the same time, I might add slightly more darker shading for the shrub in the foreground. It's also just a good way to bring in some variation. This photo was taken right after the harvest, and you can see that there's nothing else growing there right now, but you can still see the rows of crops that used to be there by these lines. I'm just going to make those lines very faintly. Again, not our focus. I'm not really bothered about adding too many dark lines at this stage. I've got this very faint lines that runs from that hill all the way to the middle ground over here. And in line with the perspective, as the lines come near to here, it widens, whereas they are going to be quite narrow right near where the hill is, and this gives you the perspective you need for this landscape or the depth you need for this landscape. There's a little raised area over here. You can see by the lines that are going on from the bush to this line over here. You can see how the lines are sort of widening as well. Just creating some. It doesn't have to look exactly like how you see in your picture as long as you can create that sense of depth, a little bit of perspective, where the lines are narrower further away from us and it widens as it comes out. I just want to create a little bit more of the beautiful lines. It just makes a huge difference just to have lines. It creates a lot of depth. You can see just by adding three levels or three sections of lines, it has created a lot of depth for my sketch here, some texture of grass here if I need. Again, this is not really necessary, but if you want to add more details, you can just break these long lines by adding a few smaller lines to create the texture or the impression of grass. If we look at our reference picture, you can see how the front shrub is a little bit lighter compared to what's in the background. I like to use an eraser. If you can look for a corner of that eraser, maybe make a few lines it's going to highlight those areas. It works really well where there is a darker area and you want to add some highlighted areas over there. I'm going to use the edge of my rubber and pull out or rub out a few lines like that, and it breaks that dark shape, giving me details of some grass in the foreground. I also like to bring in a little bit of highlights in these areas as well. I'm just going to lift out using my eraser. This is why it's necessary to have an eraser. Holding my pencil in a more conventional way, I'm going to add a few details of those shrubs, just a few squiggles to create finer details of the shrub. I 9. Project 3: Our next sketch, we are going to look at how we can add or eliminate a few details in the background. We're going to think about what we can keep or what we can modify for our sketch. This photograph, again, is very similar to what we have been referring to for the past two sketches. I'm going to start off by looking at what I can include from this sketch. I quite like the depth, the things in the background that defines this landscape. I'd also like to emphasize a little bit more on the shadows of the trees in the foreground. I'll start off with a very rough outline just to suggest where I would like my landscape. This kind of gives me an idea of where to place elements within the landscape. The foreground, which is the dry grass, I'm going to keep it quite low over here. And then we've got a row of trees. We can only see the top of the trees here and they look more like shrubs at this stage. I'm going to add the first row first, so that's the two large shrubs or the trees. Then we've got some taller trees, maybe poplar or something in the background. On this side, the trees are a lot more bigger and they are in a continuous line. It looks like a row of shrubs at this stage. I'm just going to create a very rough shape just to show how long they go. And then I can break it into different areas later on. Let me just place some taller trees or maybe just the shape of those taller trees at this stage. You can see how light my pencil marks are. Then from there on, there's I think there's a few shrubs or trees in the background over here as well. That's two layers of foliage over here, and then from there on, we have the background. I'd like to bring this line of the valley quite low and it disappears behind these trees. And then I've got the next level of landscape where I can add a little bit of a hilly area over there. I've got some shrubs or trees in the far in the background over there. Then there are some buildings in this area. Which I'm going to add, but I'm not going to add all of these buildings. I'll probably add just a few. I'll leave that space to add the buildings a bit later. I'll finish off this maybe another hill over here. Again, it doesn't have to look exactly the same way, so I'm just going to create what looks best for my sketch. I think I've created that sort of depth with these hills in the background, and now I'm going to start adding some more details, just making those shapes a little bit more darker, making more sense to this landscape that I've sketched now. So I'll first start with adding a few buildings. Not as many as I see in the reference picture, but maybe just a few to suggest some buildings over there. So whatever fits my valley, that's what I'm going to do. That's a little barn or something over there. Maybe I can add some similar looking buildings over here as well. I can maybe add the rooftop and offer another one over here. And it sort of hides behind those trees. And then maybe one last one at a higher level over here. I think that looks okay for now, and I think I'm going to stop with just those buildings. I'm not going to add each and everything that I see over there. Let's add a few more details. Maybe I'll just make. We don't need a lot of details for elements that are far out in the background, so I'm just going to try and add some shadows just to show a little bit of depth in what we're doing. Maybe add a little maybe I'll just add a little line to suggest door. That's the roof. The roof is going to stay white, but everything else I can probably a darker shape to show the side of that building, which is hiding behind that valley. I can maybe show some shadow on this side of the building, this barn as well. Quite dark. It's all in the shadow, I guess, and then I'm going to add some shading to building the side of this building as well. I'll leave the roof white again. Now what's in the background? Probably add some shadow again, maybe a window or something just to suggest that it's a building. Again, I'm going to leave the rooftop white for now. I'll see if I need to add anything more later on. Just suggestion of shrubs in the background. Adding the shrubs just near the roof also helps me to keep those roofs quite highlighted. Then these trees over here, again, I'm going to keep it quite light. I'll just darken the bottom areas of these shrubs, creating a variation with that now. This is all the shading that would need. I don't really need to add any more details to those shrubs because it's in the background and we don't need a lot of details for what's in the background. The hill in the background, again, quite light shading or even left to almost no shading at all. It's just a suggestion of landscape far away. I'll now begin to add some shading or some value to the trees in the foreground. It's all about getting the dark and light in this sketch. That's the shrub in the background. Darkening the inside of that shape slightly more than the outside to create more depth. Even with the taller trees, I'm going to add these very hazy shading, holding the pencil quite flat. I don't really need to add in lots of details that way. Maybe right at the bottom, I'll darken a bit more, but the top skin stay lighter. And now for these tops of the trees in the foreground, you can see a dark shadow on these trees. Mainly on the right side, I'll start with those darker shadows and then I'll lighten the surrounding areas, but at the same time leaving a little bit of untouched areas like these to create highlights. I'll follow the same principle for the next tree as well. I and almost leaving a layer of untouched area here just to create those highlights. Let's do the same for the next shrub as well. And this contrast of dark and light is what creates depth in these shrubs. Now for the row of trees over here, I'll just mark out where I want the darker areas to be slightly marking out with a much lighter pencil line. So I'm not overworking in these areas. All that area is pretty dark, so I'm going to start off with really heavy shading. And then as I come to the outside of these shapes, I will lighten my pencil lines a bit more. So darker in this area and then slowly lightening my pencil lines as I go outside to this area. And let me just continue that for the row of trees over here. And for some details in the foreground, you can see how I've created this sort of edgy shading over here. That helps me to create the highlights of the grass in the foreground, as well, the dry grass in the foreground. So I'm just going to be very careful to add a few more of these lines to create the texture or the impression of the grass in the foreground. And then just to show a little bit of texture or little bits of movement in the foreground, I'm just going to add a few lines just to show depth. I can even add a few lines like these to show the impression of the grass in the foreground. When nearly done, I just want to add because this area looks too dark bright, I'm going to tone it down slightly. I'm just going to add some shading in the background. Maybe add a few lines here on this field. Adding adding a detail of some foliage over here just to break that long line. I know it's not there in our reference picture, but I've kind of added on a few of my elements. I've eliminated a whole area of foliage in this corner over here. I've eliminated a house over here, and I haven't done the foliage exactly the same way. I haven't done the lines of the hills the same way. But I've created my own little landscape sketch inspired by the reference picture that we used. 10. Project 4: Welcome to another day of landscape sketching. Yesterday, we were looking at shading and creating depth in a landscape. Using very heavy shading, we eliminated and added on details just to fit our landscape. Today we're going to look at something similar and we're going to combine all the things that we have learned so far. We are going to add a little bit of depth into the next landscape. We're going to add a bit of shading and we're going to decide what we want to keep and what we want to eliminate in our next landscape sketch. One of the reasons why I like this landscape is because it's rather simple. I can see those beautiful lines that go across the field and that gives a sense of depth. It's a great thing to sketch, to be honest. I also like the little house that I can see in the background. Which I'd like to bring into the picture and make it one of the focus of the landscape. Here we are also going to think about how we can create a landscape sketch that is visually pleasing. I will start off by marking where the field ends and where the background begins. When I divide this landscape into the foreground and the background, I don't want to make two equal halves. Instead, I'd like to distort that a little bit and maybe make foreground a little bit larger than the background, which means I am going to compromise on the space where the sky is. I'm not really concentrating too much on the sky. I think I'll keep the sky pretty small over here. I'd like all the details of the landscape in the foreground here. Also, I've got that little house which is on the right hand corner. In the reference picture, it is to the far right hand corner. I would like to bring it a little bit inside, maybe just about here. I'm going to place that house over here. One of the features of this house that I particularly like is this tall chimney that creates character to this house. Maybe two windows over here, another one over here. I lightly shade the roof, but not too much. I'll maybe give some color to this side of the house as well, but I'll leave this side white just to show light falling from this side. I'm going to bring that line a little bit down over here so I have enough space for the shrubs and the greenery around the house. That's a little shrub or a green shrub, which is pretty dark. I'm going to create that darkness here already. So because we're just using the pencil. We are looking at each shape in terms of lightness and darkness. Because we're not using any other color but just one color. This is a great exercise if you like to practice the lightness and the darkness in a scene, and it can be easily applied to a colored sketch as well. You can see how scribbly my lines are. Very little details here because it's far off. Although I cannot see a lot of shadows in this reference picture because it was taken on a moody day, I still like to bring in a little bit of lightness and darkness or value into this sketch and especially to this shrub. So I've shaded it quite dark on the right side, just like how I've done with the house, and I'm lightening my shading towards the left. There is another shrub nearby. Just to bring in some interest, I'm going to make it a bit smaller than this big shrub over here, so I'll make this shrub nice and big. Again, the same technique of dark and light, bringing in some interest into the shrub as well. I can maybe add some random lines just to suggest that there's something else in that corner there, but that's not really my focus, so I'm not going to worry too much about it just yet. There's a hilly area in the background, and I can see a road that goes up that hilly area in the reference picture. All those details are not really necessary in my sketch, so I'm going to eliminate those details for now. I'll just lightly shade that hill in the background. When I shade that hill in the background, I'd like that to be slightly darker near the roof. The roof stands out as a lighter shape. Just bringing in contrast in this sketch, making things stand out because we're working with just one color and we really need to think about how we can make things stand out. Then again over here, the shrub on this side is lighter, which means the hill in the background is going to be slightly darker. Just creating that contrast. The same way I'm going to do that for the shrub as well. The hill in the background so far has been a bit darker. But it's soft lines. I'm not adding any stark lines over there because if I add any stark lines into the background, my ice is going to automatically look at that. Instead, I am creating these soft lines, very fuzzy lines. You can even hold your pencil like this, if you like, to create the soft lines. Then as I come to the left side, I'm going to lighten that hill as well. I'm going to start working on the background, which is the huge field. With these beautiful lines, there's a path on the left side, which I'd like to add as well. So I think the path over here, it vanishes off somewhere there, but it winds its way to the foreground like that. The next line is going to start at this point again, and as this line winds down, I'm going to make this whole shape wider, creating a sense of depth. In the foreground, I'm immediately going to just break that line with some lines for tall grass. There is a tire over here or you can even make it into a rock if you like. Because I walk this path, I know that it's a tire, and I think this is just their way of marking their boundary separating the field from the path. I'm just going to just quickly sketch that tire. There's grass growing all around it, so I just need the impression, just a quick sketch of that tire. I so here I'm going to add lines in different direction just creating the impression of grass. Just creating some darkness in between that grass as I go along. Very quick, rough sketch at this stage. So I'll leave that there for now, and I'll finish off the rest of the field before I decide how much of lightness and darkness I need in the foreground. There is an other shrub on this side over here. Shrub is definitely darker than the hill in the background, so I'm going to make it quite dark. I'm going to create really dark shapes, dark scribbles to create the silhouette of the tree or the shrub that is on this side. I'm also going to add some finer details using the short scribbles to bring some character. So you can see the path is covered by that shrub now, which is absolutely fine. That's what's happening in the reference picture as well. I'm just going to add some lines just to define that path. Maybe some grass along the side of the path as well. This could look quite different from the reference picture once it's done, but that's fine. As long as we are just keeping that as a reference picture, we're not going to create exactly the same drawing as we see in the reference picture. Just creating some horizontal lines over here just to define that path over here. I feel that it's a lot darker on this side, whereas it goes a bit lighter over there. I want to create a layer of graphite that starts quite dark in the foreground, but as it moves away from the foreground, it lightens out. And then finishes off almost nothing like this. I can also use my fingers to smudge that, create even more softer outcome over there. And I'm going to add a few lines in the fields, as you can see in the reference picture. This is just to bring in some depth and add some character into that field. And if you look at the reference picture, you can see that all these lines join or meet at a point just beyond that shrub. And the lines, when they come closer to us, are wider, as you can see how I've marked in the sketch. And this sort of creates an illusion of depth, the sense of far and near. Then as I'm working on these, I can also add a little bit of details maybe make these lines a bit darker, but yet keeping it quite soft, adding some short lines to depict grass in the foreground. Sometimes it's good to change the angle of the grass as well, so you get more natural looking grass. Grass that surrounds the tire looks much lighter compared to the field in the background. I'm going to use an eraser to lift out some lines. Then as I'm doing that, if I go in and darken the areas beyond that, keeping that lighter, it's going to create an illusion of light grass in the foreground. It's all about bringing in that contrast between the dark and light. And I'm nearly done with the sketch, and all that is left to do is to add in a few lines to create a focus around the house, just like the roof of the house, maybe just a few lines to define the shrubs. I'd like to use my eraser to lift out some highlights on those two shrubs, just making it stand out a bit more. And I think we are done with the sketch now. 11. Project 5 Part 1: Hello, welcome to a new day of sketching. I hope you have been enjoying sketching landscapes so far. We have been looking at simple landscapes with fairly muted color all this while, and now I have brought to you a landscape with a lot more brighter colors, and we're going to see if we can still work out the darkness and the lightness. There's also a dark shadow on the fields in the foreground as well, and it is a lot more interesting to shade. I quite like the contrast between the light and the dark here, like the contrast between the yellow and the green here. I'm going to go for a line which sits slightly above the middle. That's going to be the sky, that's going to be the foreground with the fields. At the top left of the landscape. I can see there's a little bit of hilly area or just an area with lots of trees. Because we don't know what that is. I'm just going to follow the shape. It's a very shallow hilly shape it doesn't have to look exactly the same way. You might want to make it much taller if that works for you. I think there's a lighter hilly area just about there as well. There is a structure over here. I'm not sure what that is, but I quite like to convert that into an electric post or something. Where the horizon line is, there's a little bit of a landscape right at the back over there. Then the yellow field and the green field are separated by a footpath in the middle. You can see that line that follows along, starting from that background, the horizon line, it curves. It comes all the way to the right, it curves a little bit, and then it finishes off in the foreground. It's always good to look at what shape this line and the outside of the picture creates. That way you can get the part accurately. It comes all the way to the foreground here and we've got a large area of uncut grass in this area. Another line that comes out on the other side over here and finishes off on the left hand side over here. And that way, we know that this is the green field, plus the yellow field. But obviously, we're not using color. So we're going to figure out which is the lighter area, which is the darker area. I'll start off with the background, which is the easier areas. In the background, you've got this hazy landscape, the hazy hilly area. Going to do that first. While I'm doing that, I'm just going to look at how dark it is compared to the fields and the foreground. I feel that it's definitely darker than the fields in the foreground in this area. I'm just going to shade that first. I just feel the bottom of that is a lot more darker. I'll just scribble a few details in Now, I can see that there's a dark shadows somewhere about here. It follows all that grass. It falls on this grassy area and it continues to this side of the field as well. I'm just going to mark that out. I know that's the dark area, that's the light area. I can even shade it lightly. A Let me add some grass for details. At this stage, we can just suggest it. We'll come back for details much later. Very light pencil lines to create the lines of the grass, the tall grass over there. I definitely know. If I squint my eyes, I can see this area is lighter, whereas this side is darker, definitely that shadow falling on there. I just continue with a few more lines over here. You can still see that it's not as dark. I haven't applied a lot of pressure on the paper, so it's just layering of another set of scribbles over the first layer of shading. I think at this stage, this is more than enough. I'll just come back to it later. Once I've marked that out, I'm going to work on the lighter area of the field as well as this area where there are lots of trees. I can definitely see that this area is pretty dark. I'll start off with shading the dark areas. I can add another darker layer if it's not dark enough, much later, but for now, I'm just going to add the shape. Applying fairly a good amount of pressure but not too harsh at this stage. I'm creating dark shapes over here. And this little hilly area is much lighter, as you can see in the reference picture, so I'm going to leave that lighter for now. Anything else around it is much lighter. I don't think I need to create a lot of shadows over there. I can just gently rub with my fingers just smudging that area, but I like to keep that area quite light at this stage. Now let's add some details. Just emphasizing a little bit of that path over here or the separation between the two fields. And towards that curve of that path, I'm going to add a little bit more deeper shading, maybe just some details of grass, as well. The grass also follows the line of perspective, making it a little bit more taller as it comes to the foreground. I'm going to repeat the process again on the left side with the green field. The blades of grass are more prominent. I can also see that they are angling away from us, and I'm just going to create those lines just by adding slanting lines, making it more characteristic. And this is something that we have observed a lot in Van Gogh's sketches. Another way of showing depth in that green field is to create shorter lines for the grass that goes further away from us that moves further towards that little hilly area. So I'm going to create shorter lines nearer to the hilly area and also place them slightly further apart, or maybe just add a few squiggles or just a few dots and dashes. Maybe add a few scribbles to show a little bit of texture of the shrubs over here. I can show a little bit of texture in the grass in this area, the wheat fields here as well. The texture is more coarse because you can see that the wheat field has been harvested. Especially in the foreground, you can see how the grass is more stubby, more thicker looking. Going to add some darker areas. There's a mixture of dry as well as green grass in this stall uncut area. I can represent that by adding some darker grass and leaving a little bit with lighter areas as well. Obviously, pretty light over here in this area. I am going to use my eraser to create that illusion of darkness and lightness here. I'll place all the darker areas here for now. And then using the eraser, I'm just going to lift out or erase out a little bit of light areas. Just a few lines over here to represent the wheat fields. I can maybe add a little bit of texture in the foreground here to show the path that is falling in front of us. Maybe some horizontal lines in line with the path. Maybe a few straws of grass sticking out here and there. 12. Project 5 Part 2: Still have this expanse of the sky, which we haven't done much. We haven't done the sky in any of our landscape so far. I was thinking maybe we could give the sky a try now. Again, we are looking at a bright sky with clouds in it and we know that the clouds are much lighter compared to the blue sky. I'm starting off with a very hazy shading for the sky. I like to create it as fuzzy as possible without much pencil lines. I'm trying to smudge it as I go along the clouds are placed in a curvy angle, just showing the depth of that sky as well. I'm trying to create pencil lines that shows the depth of the sky as well. Then once I have that light shading going on there, I can always add clouds by lifting out using my eraser. The clouds also have shadows. I'm just going to go in and add some shadows to the clouds as well. This is a step that is optional if you want to just keep the clouds just like how you can see, right now, it is fine. But if you want to add a little bit of shadow to those clouds, that's also a great idea to make it look more realistic. So clouds are definitely more darker than the bright blue sky in the background. It is good to add a few fuzzy shapes for the clouds anyway, along with lifting out with the Emaser. I don't want to overwork it too much. I'm going to stop there for now. Just like that, our landscape is completed. 13. Project 6 Part 1: Welcome to day six of our landscape sketching challenge. We're going to move on and do another landscape. This landscape is a good example for details in the foreground. As you can see in this landscape, we've got a tree and it's foliage that's framing the landscape. On the right side, we've also got a few wildflowers in the foreground as well, and we're going to see if we can add such details to this landscape. As always, we're going to start with a quick rough frame, so we know where to place each and every element. Once I have that, I'm going to start marking all the things like how we have been doing in the past few landscapes. You can start at any stage really. Some people might like to start with framing. By using the tree in the foreground and then begin to add the elements in the background. Another way to start is to start with the elements, the bigger shapes and the elements in the background and then finish off by framing with the tree. I'm going to start by the larger shapes or just demarcating the different sections of the landscape, mainly starting off with the line that separates the lavender field in the background. And it's the same line where the buildings are situated as well. I think I'm going to place it. This is about the halfway mark of this whole frame. I'd like to place it a little bit lower than that. Mainly because I'd like to add a little bit of that emphasis on the lavender fields or the hill in the background. That's where the field in the foreground begins. This section is further divided into a green stretch as well as a brownish stretch of wheat. I'm going to make that division here right now. Sorting out the bigger shapes first before we add any details. In the background, I can see that hill full of foliage. It's slanting or the valley comes to the left. That again is divided into a stretch of foliage right in the background, and then we've got a stretch of lavender fields in the foreground or in the front of that background. Just roughly marking those shapes in so the lavender fields, I'm going to maybe divide it with a little bit of foliage here in the middle. Maybe another set of green foliage here as well. Because again, we're not using color, it is all down to the different shapes and the shadows, the contrast between the light and dark, that's going to create this variation for us. I've marked out the bigger shapes here. Now at this stage, I like to mark out the tree. I think I can cover up that much of that area, and then the foliage is filling the areas starting with here. I'm just going to maybe give a very light pencil mark just to show where the foliage goes. I can work into it later on. I'll just mark the tree down just for now, I know that's where the tree goes. There's a bit of foliage that I can see over here. And further down here, I can see there's a bit of foliage that is in front of the lavender field that continues and it gets taller as it comes to the left hand side with tall poplar trees on the left. Now, just underneath the poplar trees, I've got a barn, let's mark that barn out. There's another shrub here in front of that, which just adds on to having lesser details for that building. And then further up here, I've got another building, which I feel it's too far off for my liking. I'd like to bring this building or the barn nearer to this one here. I'm going to place it somewhere about here, much lower at height as well. So I'm going to make sure that it's smaller or shorter compared to the first building I did. And now the foliage behind that, if you look really closely, you can see it starts off really dark over here, making the buildings stand out as well because it's like a moody climate and you can't really see where the shadows are going. I'm just going to look really carefully. And if I do look really carefully, I feel that it's a lot more darker on this side of this building over here. So I'm just going to shade that in for now. The roof is definitely lighter, but there is a sense of shadow on this side of the building. It's not altogether bright, I'm going to shade it lightly and maybe I'll leave the roof bright, white, or untouched for now. Following the same set of rules for this barn as well, this side or the left side is going to be darker. The edges so it is going to be a little bit edgy like that, it gives the impression of foliage in the foreground as well. This side is going to be shaded, but again, just slightly less shaded compared to this side. I'll leave the roof like that, maybe just a few lines. I'll leave the roof that darker shadows in the background, especially for this foliage. So just giving the impression of foliage with quick shading. Once we've got that really dark shape near the buildings, I can then loosen out and lighten out the shapes of the foliage in the background, start really dark nearer to the ground, and then I can lighten the pencil lines, make it lighter as I go outside. With the port plt trees, again, I'd like to have these rough long lines. I start really soft, not too harsh lines at this stage. Then I can decide if I want to add more or not much later. I can build the depth slowly, I think I'll do another layer of shading for the trees over here. At the same time, I'd like to keep the top a little bit loose and light. I feel that the barn here has been shaded a bit too dark, so I'll just use my eraser gently dab on it, and I'm slowly lifting off a little bit of pencil shading from that born, making it a bit lighter, as you can see. Now moving on, I'm going to finish off a little bit of shading for the foliage that is here as well. Starting off light, a little bit darker nearer to the ground, more dense foliage nearer to the ground. As it goes higher up, the foliage lightens. There's more light falling on the foliage as well, which is why we have made the foliage lighter on the top. Do the same for this one. There's dense foliage in the background over there in the reference picture, the foliage in the front is a lot more lighter, so I'll keep it light. I will make the edges of these quite toothy, it resembles the impression that it creates with all the crops that's growing in front for the green stretch of crops in this field here, again, if we look really carefully, you can see it's a lot more darker at the bottom and it lightens out as it goes nearer or it goes farther away from us. I'll start with a very rough line over here, maybe start shading a bit darker over here, but not too dark. And then from there, I am just going to add a few lines like that, still holding my pencil flat down like that because then I get these soft lines. I'm going to pull my pencil in an upward motion to create an impression of the crops that are growing in that area. I'm also going to leave a little bit of highlights or unshaded area, creating a contrast between the barn and the field in front of it. It But just adding these lines here and there just to suggest the texture that we can see there. Now, let's move on to the field in the foreground. It's nice and brown, and compared to the green that is in the background, I feel, again, this area is a lot more lighter. So I'm going to start off with a very rough shading. I'd like to keep it a little bit light in contrast to the shading over here. The only texture I need to add here are just a few lines to show some texture of the grass in the foreground. And with this, we are done with the foreground and the middle ground of this sketch. Now we are going to move on to doing the background where the lavender fields are and the main details of the trees and the shrubs in front. 14. Project 6 Part 2: We've done all of this in quite dark and we've emphasized on the elements here, I am going to keep the background a little bit on a lighter side. I'm going to start shading but quite light. Then I'll see how it goes and then decide if I want to make a few areas of it darker. But just to keep in line with the angle or the orientation of the valley, I'm just going to add lines that are in this direction. I'd like to use lines in different direction, just like how we saw in the sketches of Vincent Van Gogh. Where he has used lines in different directions to create a sense of movement, a sense of depth. Just the orientation of different elements can also be achieved just by using directional lines. Let's put some foliage in the background as well. For the foliage, I'd like to keep a bit of a scribbly sketchy outcome over here. I'll start with the scruby sketchy shading and then I can decide where I want to make it darker. Obviously, we don't want to make this whole area darker, but at the same time, we'd like to show that little bit of depth in the foliage in the background as well. So once I've put that down, I can now go in with adding a little bit more darker areas in some areas of this foliage in the background, but not too stark. We don't want to take away the attention from this area. At this stage, I'd like to switch between my pencil holds from a more conventional way to holding it flat. You might have a different way of holding your pencil. That's absolutely fine, but it's just a few techniques, few tips that I can give in case you wanted to see how you can vary the way you hold pencils to create different textures on paper. Just emphasizing a few areas of that lavender field there, not too much, just to create some variation. I think there's a little bit of foliage in here. Maybe just a rough line would do. Do the same for another set of foliage in the middle of the field over here. It's going to make the foliage a bit larger over here. I think we've done waters in the background, Waters in the middle ground. Now what's left for us is to finally add the finer details. That's the main focus on the right side, which is the tree, and then we've also got some foliage in the foreground over here. We're going to create an impression of it, let's start working on the tree first and then we'll come over and finish off the foliage and the wildflowers in the foreground. With the tree trunk itself, I can see it's quite nice and dark to the side of the frame. It slightly lightens out, but at the same time, it's definitely more defining compared to what's in the background. So I am going to draw a slightly darker line just to demarcate it from what's happening in the background, maybe give a bit of texture as well. And then I'm going to start adding a few leaves or leaf like structure just to begin to show foliage. Definitely darker on this side, so I'm just going to make that area really nice and dark. Maybe just add a leaf or two as I go along as well. And very rough shape for the texture of foliage, the texture of leaves over here. I fill that in here, leaving little specks of unshaded areas. Then as I come to this area, I can now decide where I want this branch to flow. I'd probably leave one here. Again, starting off with really rough shading, just really rough scribbling. Again, I'm using the flat side of the nib at this stage. I'll just create the shape first and then I can come back and add some finer details with the pointy end of the pencil. Another set of leaves over here and from there on, I can see how it feathers out, just giving the texture of the tree. Let me try and extend some of the foliage right down to here. Now I'm going to start using my pointy end of the pencil, adding few defined shapes of the leaves as well. The shape of the tree is really just for framing the picture, so it really doesn't matter if it's quite sketchy and for the foliage in the foreground, I'd still like to see what's in the middle ground, the barn and everything. I'm just going to reduce the amount of foliage I see over here. I'll put a layer of shading here. And then I can start to decide how much of detail I want in each. I can even give texture of foliage with short lines like this over here. You don't really need to look closely into the reference picture for this because all these little lines can be made depending on what your personal choice is. It doesn't have to look exactly like the foliage in the reference picture. Then I'm going to add a few lines just for the foliage that you can see here as well. Because these areas here are quite dark for us, I don't think it's a good idea to make these lines go taller. Because if I make it taller, they're going to come over here and I don't think you can really see what's happening. Because of that, I have decided to make these lines of the foliage quite short. A difference from what we see in the reference picture because I'd like to show some details of the wildflowers that you can see in the foreground, adding a little bit of dots just to create the impression, the texture. And I might just use the edge of my eraser to bring back some light over here, it resonates with the foliage that are in the foreground as well. Just finish off with a few more of these foliage here, very rough lines. We're done with this sketch now. I hope you enjoyed sketching this. This was a little bit more detailed, a little bit more challenging compared to the more simpler landscapes we were doing in the past five days. 15. Project 7: Next sketch is again, focusing on details in a landscape. We're going to try and do a little bit of flowers with very hazy landscape in the background. Photograph that I've taken here, taken from my phone, it is in a portrait mode, and we're going to keep our sketch in a portrait mode as well. It doesn't have to be as long as the reference picture. You can make changes to how long you want it to be. I'm going to start by marking out the flowers. We can see there's a cluster of flowers here. As a way of marking out the orientation and the way the flowers are, I'm just going to mark them out in larger shapes. So there's a cluster of flowers over here, and that sort of extends slanting like that sideways grows taller over here. There's a low flower at the top over there. There's one right down the bottom. I might eliminate the one even below that. I can maybe add another low flower over here. So let me start by adding the shapes of the flowers. There are more fuzzy tiny long petals, dandelines. So I'm going to try and get the basic shape first with a few lines to represent the petals. We're going to use very simple shapes and very light pencil marks at this stage. I'm just going to lightly shade that flower, make it look more three D likes. I'm just going to squint my eyes, look for a little bit of a shadow in that shape and shade that shape. Then I'm going to add a few petals to make it look more like dandelions. That little cluster is more than enough for it to create an impression of dandelions. Let's do something quite similar to the flower below it. Shade the brownish area, and then beyond that, I'm going to draw a few petals just creating the impression of dandelion flowers. As you can see, I'm keeping it quiet light at this stage. I can always come back and add some darker shadows later on. Going to finish off that flower, the really dark green shape at the bottom of that flower. It may look quite odd at this stage because we don't have anything in the background. But as we begin to fill what's in the background or give a nice shade to the background, these will begin to make more sense. There's another bud over here. I'm just going to add another bud here, maybe connected to that dandeline as well. This is quite a different picture compared to all the reference pictures we have been looking at so far. It may look more challenging. I hope I can give you some tips on how to keep it simple. A I'm going to move on and add the same petal like shapes or maybe just a fuzzy shady area here because these flowers are not really my focus. I can just get away with just shading a similar shape, scribbling in a similar shape like this. Here and there pulling out a few petals. Here again, it's the contrast that we are looking at. So if there's a lighter flower, then we finish off with a darker stem, a darker bud. After a point, you can create your own flowers in a similar way. It doesn't have to look exactly like the flowers that we see here at all. There is another flower which is more defined over here. I'm going to create the shape, create the shape of the stem and the bud as well. Just adding layers of petals, just like how you can see on a dandelin the whole idea is, again, to create the dark and the light. I'm just going to create a darker area just below that flower. There's another stem and going above that flower, there are a few buds at the top. I think that is a nice thing to try and tackle because it gives out more details of that plant than any other flower. There's another huge bud with just a few petals on the top. Looks quite interesting as an object to sketch. I'm definitely going to include that into my sketch. Moving on, I'd like to add that lone flower at the top now, and I'd like to start with doing a simple rounder shape and then slowly adding some petals in it. Again, using very soft pencil lines. I'd like to add different layers of these petals. So add a cluster in the middle, and then for the ones outside, I can pull out looser ones like that. If you think the petals look rather thin, if you think the flour looks rather thin with fewer petals, you can always finish it off with a bit of light shading to make it look more thicker. And then I'm going to finish off the stem, the bottom of that petal. I quite like the overall placement of the dandelins. What I'm going to do is create a shading just to represent the foliage in the background, and then I can decide how much more details I want to add. We don't really need to copy exactly the same things going on in the background. You can just shade to create a larger shape. It's always good to break it down to larger shape, and then I can create a little bit of texture of the foliage in the background as well. There's a lot of buds at the bottom. I'm just going to create the impression by creating a little bit of circular shapes over here, but not too much of details. I just need to create the impression just to make it look more full. I said I would be adding the other flower over here, it goes a little bit outside my frame, which is completely fine. Y. Just a few lines for the background, again, just representing foliage. I can see a cluster of flowers here, but I'm just going to add just a random shape just to make the foliage look more full. As for the background, the landscape in the background, which in the reference picture you can see it's quite hazy. You can't really see what's happening over there. I'm just going to create a little hilly area in the background just showing that there's some background there. And then maybe shade that slightly. It's just again to create the impression. Okay. If you think you've shaded over the flowers while you're shading the background, you can always bring back some light by using the eraser to lift out some lines and we can redefine those petals as well. We are done with this sketch. 16. Project 8: Next two sketches focuses on details again, and one of them will focus on the details of stone fences in a stone building. As always, it's really good to start off with a rather sharp pencil. The main focus is on the hut, the stone fence, which is in the foreground. Is at an angle because the right side is further away from us. I'm going to make that line slanting just to show that and it also gives a sense of depth when I do that. The stone fence, again, you can see there's a height difference between the store fence that is over here and over here again showing the depth of this scene. Once I mark that out, I can start drawing the barn or the stone structure. I quite like to represent the details of the barn, mainly the beam, the doorway, the unevenness of the stone structure, the little ventilation holes that you can see on the stone structure. I'm going to shade the inside of the doorway and the roof, which looks like it's slightly darker compared to the stone building. And also the side of that stone building is a little bit darker than the front. And now I'm going to add a few details of the fence. It's a stone fence. As well as that, it's also got these concrete posts as well with what I'm guessing is a wire as the fence. I'm going to slowly add in the details of the stone fence. So the texture of the stones are quite edgy, very angular. I don't need to give a lot of details for the stone structure further away from me, whereas in this area, I'm going to start adding a few detailed stones, just concentrating on few of the shapes that I can see there. I can see it's quite edgy. Some of them are quite boxy as well. More angular shapes, which we have not tried so far, add another one here. Once I place the shapes in, the next stage is all about adding the darkest shadows, the deepest areas of the stone structure. I've just added those and you can see how the stones here are more defined compared to a very suggestive texture here as well, which is a way that we can show depth and perspective in the foreground. We've got foliage, which we are quite used to drawing during the past few days. I'm just going to suggest that here through shading. And let's add some more darker shades for the foliage. Again, because it's not our focus, I'm just going to suggest a few darker areas here first, and then I can decide whether I want to add any more details later on. Some of this foliage are covering the stone structure as well, so then we can decide on what to shade because there's no point shading the stone structure first and then going on to adding the foliage if the foliage is going to cover most of that stone structure. For the grass in the foreground, I'll start off with a little bit of shading and then I can add lines and directional suggestive lines to create the texture of the grass in the foreground. You can see it's quite darker on this side. I'm just going to add a bit of shadow over here, bit darker over there, nearer to the foliage. It's just about getting the bigger shapes, the shadow areas. Now I'm going to start placing some suggestive lines for the grass in the foreground. There's an odd bit of stones here and there, so I can maybe suggest that as well. I'm going to add some directional lines just to show grass in the foreground. And the good thing about landscape sketching is that each and every element depends on the elements around it, and you decide how much of details you want to show, depending on what's around it and what you want to make the focus. So I have done a few textured lines for the foliage in the foreground. Before I do anymore, I'd like to add some texture of the stones. So the ones nearer to the foliage are more darker, leaving a little bit of highlight on the top of those stones, so it looks more like more rounded and three D like. And where the stones are finishing, starting off with another stone, I'm going to make those gaps really dark and creating the texture that way. I think this is my main focus. I've got a few stones here that I'd like to emphasize on. As you can see, I've only just suggested a few shapes here and it already begins to look like a stone fence, just a few areas where I'd like the foliage to be. I'm going to emphasize those. Go to give a very hazy shading for the stones here and then maybe suggest a few darker lines, darker shapes as well. You can see it is much lighter, more suggestive in this area compared to the more detailed stonework here. Moving on to the stone building. I'll begin the shading first. Again, it's an overcast weather. I just like to suggest a bit of shading over here, but not too bright. Then I can add these few short lines just to show the texture of the stonework over here. But then again, it's not really necessary to show each and every brick Then in the background, we've got a little hill, going to finish that off, and then a little bit of foliage as well or the landscape in the background. W just foliage, I'm going to maybe do a bit of shading just to suggest that. 17. Project 9: Next sketch also focuses on some texture. This time we're looking at trees. In this sketch, I'd like to keep it quite simple, just looking at the trees and the fence in the foreground and we can just finish off with that. The two trees that are placed over here are more of a rough triangular shape over here. I like to break that triangle up by adding a little bit of foliage here as well. So with light pencil marks, I'm going to represent the shape of the tree. Let's have two trees over here. It's two main trees over here. Then maybe a suggestion of another tree in the background as well. There's fence that is right in front of these trees. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Just suggest a fence and I'd like to suggest the greenery in the background as well. So the foliage, I'm going to start shading. There's another set of fence sideways here, so I'm just going to suggest that as well. Just to emphasize the fence over here, I'm just going to shade the gap in between that fence stands out. Then let's concentrate on the tree now. Starting off with very rough scribbly lines, holding the pencil flat just to create the shape and the texture of the tree. I'm going to go in for loose scribbles. It can be really wild with the lines over here, make it flow in all directions, just creating the wild texture of the trees that you can see here. Instead of having the shading in one single direction, you can just vary the direction, making a rough scribble. Now, let's add some depth to this tree. I'd like it to be a little bit more darker in this area where I can suggest a little bit more depth in the foliage. A little bit of darker area here at the top. I Now I'm going to add the shadow of the tree trunk. It's quite dark. I'm going to start with the darker shape of the tree trunk. If you have noticed I have changed how this tree trunk is slightly slanting compared to this one instead of having two parallel lines of distorted those parallel lines of the tree trunk. It's just a way to bring in some interest into this sketch. I can also add a few branches that are sticking out like that. The tree in the background, I'm going to go in with a lighter shading so it doesn't take a lot of focus. I think I'd like it to be a little bit more brighter, it's quite hazy, not really taking away the focus from the foreground. Let's add some finer details of the tree here, mainly the edges with finer twigs, finer details of the leaves, mainly creating the texture of the trees. I emphasizing the details, focusing on the details of this darker area here, creating texture of the foliage. I quite like the loose lines and the texture that this tree has. Suggest a few branches here in the background as well. Okay. Just going to add a little bit more of that darker texture here, just beneath the tree over here. And finally, I'd like to add a few angular shapes at the bottom of that fence to suggest stones. And I'm done with the sketch. O 18. Project 10 Part 1: Last and final landscape sketching is based on this reference picture of a seascape. I chose this particularly because we haven't tried a landscape such as this before, and I would like to show you how we can tackle the rocky hills and the rocky beach here. As always, I'm going to start mark between the sky and the land, and that's far beyond in the background here where the sea is. Although this line is about halfway separating the sky from the land, I am going to go with it for now because that is going to be broken up by this rocky cliff, which is slightly at a lower level from the horizon line. I'm going to roughly draw a few lines to represent rocks of the cliff. This side of the cliff is quite rocky compared to the grassy area on the other side of the cliff. And I think I quite like to include the suggestion of the flight of stairs that is going up over here. Now, let's draw the line that separates the beach from the water. Then I've got an area of long grass in this area in the foreground, going to mark that out as well. I'm going to use long lines to represent grass at this stage. Now I can begin to add some larger shapes of the rocks here. First, I started with a silhouette, something like a silhouette. Now I'm going to see if I can bring in some details of the rocks now. Quite angular lines here to start with, and then I like to squint my eyes just to mark out the dark and light here. Quite dark over here, so I'm just going to make that dark line dark shading over here, make it look more like a silhouette, like how I can see here. So I can start with the darkest shading and then I can tone down the stark whites with a much lighter shading. And then I can decide what I want to leave as highlights. But at the moment, I think there's not a lot of highlights going on on these rocks. There's a lot of texture going on here on the rocky cliff. But I'm going to try and get only the big marks here, the big shapes here at this stage. I think there's a bit of a shadow here right at the top. Just going to mark that out. Coming slightly down, there's another shape that's lying slightly parallel to this shape over here. That is quite dark. There is a darker bit of rock over here, and then go to try and make it stand out a bit. And then we've got this slightly shaded area here as well. The rest of the area here, I can see the bottom is slightly darker compared to the top. I'll start with a shaded bottom area of this cliff and then I can finish off with lighter shading further up. As I was saying, it doesn't have to be exactly the same. I can create a cliff that looks a little bit different, only just gathering inspiration from the reference picture we're looking at. It's all about just giving some texture over here. Let's go further up. I'm going to give a little bit of a shadow over here, a bit of an edge over there. I'm gonna shade a little bit over here at the bottom of this cliff again. I'm going to add a few more of those darker shapes and lines just to get the impression of the texture of the clef. There's a little bit of light shining at the top of that cliff. I'm just going to leave that bright for now. I'm going to add a bit of a shadow on this side. And this area looks a lot more smoother compared to the cliff over here. I'll see if I can keep it a little bit more smooth. And There's a little bit of a rough area in between that green space, and I'm just going to add some texture over there just by shading that area. The top of that hill looks much lighter. So I'm going to add a very light shading. There's a little bit of a rocky texture going on over here, so I am just going to add a few squiggly lines, maybe some uneven shapes to suggest rocks in this area. And I'm just going to shade a little bit of a darker area where those rocks are. And now moving on to that flight of steps over there, I start by shading the top where I can see it's a little bit more darker. And as I come to the bottom of the cliff, I'm going to use a light shading on one side of those steps, and then I'm going to add some lines to suggest stairs in that area. The area beyond those stairs are quite dark compared to this area over here. I'll just block that light out over here, finishing off the cliff just over there, adding some directional lines to show a little bit of detail over here as well. I'd also like to add some texture for the rocks and the pebbles that are here on the beach. I'd like to use some horizontal lines just below the cliff on the left, and this sort of gives a sense of space, showing the grass in the foreground. Then there's a little bit of land beyond that. And there's a cliff in the background. And I feel that these directional lines more horizontal, compared to any of these lines here, they can sort of draw our attention to this piece of land. Going to add a few more of those huge rocks or pebbles. Just to vary the size and maybe add a larger one here. Add a few larger ones here as well. I think it's really impossible to add all of these pebbles. I'm just going to concentrate on the main ones. The ones that I feel is necessary for my sketch. You can pick and choose what's best for your sketch at this stage. I will show a little bit more pebbles or texture of the pebbles in this corner here. 19. Project 10 Part 2: There is a bit of water here, a small stream flowing into the sea. I'm going to keep it quite light. I can represent that by just adding some reflection like lines over here. I'm going to add a few more of those soft lines to represent stream. Let me just move that all the way towards the sea. I will give a few pebbles along the way, but not a lot, so it's not making this area look too heavy. Probably add a cluster of shapes over here. The water flowing here is a lot more brighter because of the light reflections. Whereas the one to us this area is a lot more darker. So again, if I squint my eyes, I can see that there's a fair amount of reflection of this particular rock here, which I can add. Maybe I can add a little bit of reflection for this rock. Do the same for a few rocks over there. Now I'd like to lightly shade the land area. Once I've done all the details, I think I can shade the area that looks more like land. And then maybe add a few highlights for the waves in this area and then add a little bit of reflection in the water here. To add on, I will give a few lines to show the texture of the tiny waves that are around in this area. Then emphasize the waves as well. I think all that area is quite bright. Maybe I can add a little bit of a shadow just over here as well. And just to show the waves or the lines of the water, I can just add a few lines here, showing the direction of the waves, the water moving towards the shore, again, quite suggestive at this stage. And now to add a few more of this texture over here, on the land. It's all about just adding that rocky texture on the land and you can choose how much of it you want to represent. You can choose which area you want those pebbles to be. It's all about just bringing that contrast between the sea and the land. The huge contrast of lines on the rocky area of the cliff, as well as the grassy area of the cliff. I think that contrast creates a beautiful balance in this landscape. Now, I'm just going to go ahead and add a few more lines just to shade this tuft of grass here. As the second layer of lines that I'm adding just to show depth in this grassy area. Then finally, I'd also like to add a little bit of shadowy area for the clouds. The clouds look really thick and dark. At this stage, there's a lot of shadow going on in the clouds there. Maybe I'll just suggest a few darker areas of the clouds. And just some finishing touches to the rocky area of the cliff, I can just add a few more details of lines or cracks on these rocks. Just a few lines makes a huge difference to the texture of these rocks. With this, we are done with the sketch. 20. Recap & Final Thoughts: As we're nearing the end of this class, I'd like to remind you to have lots of fun while scribbling through these sketches. Most of these sketches are just merely examples for you to be inspired to try out sketching for your personal joy. You may have noticed that I have only used one pencil, 14b pencil during the whole of this course to create the texture, the lightness, darkness, and depth in these sketches. Some of the things that we could look at is the creation of high contrasts in these landscape sketches. For example, this one here, we created a contrasting dark silhouette of the tree compared to the lighter background in the landscape and also adding a few darker areas to where you want your viewers eyes to be. It's also about creating directional lines that show movement, especially in the fields in this landscape here. The depth of this landscape is shown again by the perspective created by the clouds over here, the path that goes along in this landscape. Another thing that we have learned and that you can use in your sketches in future is to decide what you want for your landscape. You can either add or eliminate elements that you think is best for your landscape. You can move the elements around to please yourself, to make sure that it looks visually pleasing, just like these landscapes here where we looked at how to choose on what buildings we need here in the background. Or just by merely moving this house from the right corner, a little bit towards the center, so it comes more into focus. We can also look at these landscapes where we have represented shadows and shrubs and trees just by scribbling and just building in layers by different layers of scribbling. Shading. You can also think of the way you hold the pencil in different ways, starting with a normal conventional hold to holding it flat down so you get really nice dark shapes. I also like to encourage you to go back and look at the works of Vincent Van Gogh and how we created some sketches inspired by his lines. His work is quite different in terms of using different types of directional lines. However, in the landscape sketches that we have done, we have used a combination of these directional lines as well as shading and all this were done just by the use of one single pencil and an eraser. I hope you enjoyed this course. Please feel free to share your work. It doesn't have to be the landscape sketches that we have done in class. It could be anything that you were inspired to do in your sketchbook for project. It would be wonderful to see at least one of these sketches or you can sketch any landscape that has inspired you. Thank you for joining me in this course. I hope to see some of your projects. Happy sketching. Bye.