Landscapes

Landscapes. Just the word brings a shiver to my artistic spine. I've never been one for drawing landscapes. I like looking at landscapes, and sure as anything know how to appreciate good scenery (I'm the kind of person you'll find glued to the window of the train for the entire duration of the train ride). I've just never figured out how to actually draw landscapes. How do you draw a tree when you can't draw each individual branch? How do you draw a bush without drawing each leaf? And how can you draw a forest on a hillside without making it look like a blob of green?

So when we started doing landscapes in art class, I was both intrigued (because I finally had a reason to work on my landscape drawing skills) and utterly terrified (because I have absolutely no landscape drawing skills). My first ever landscape ended up looking like this: 

Our teacher handed us the print on the left and told us to use it as inspiration, and create something similar in our own style. I didn't feel like using acrylics, but I knew I wanted to use colours, so the only option I had left was dry pastels. It worked rather well, I think!

As soon as I got back home I started doing research for next week's art class (we get to choose our own landscape inspiration this time), and came across this photo on Pinterest: 

It's Fjærland (Norway), a neighbouring village to where I grew up. At first I was planning on saving it for next week's art class, but there was just something about the photo that made me want to draw it straight away. So I did! First, I did a pencil sketch:

I then decided to try something new and use a brown liner instead of the black one I normally use (which was not a good idea, as it dried much too slowly and wasn't as waterproof as I'd hoped): 

Then I used ALL the colours! 

And since the brown liner was so crappy I re-did the line work with one of my trusted black ones:

Can you tell the difference?

And here's the end result: 

I'm slowly starting to realise that drawing landscapes can be a lot of fun. This Fjærland landscape took me approximately 5 hours from start to finish. Wonder what kind of landscape I'll do next?

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Have you ever tried drawing/painting landscapes? Did you like it?