Sketching a Country Road Scene
Using a mix of watercolors, gouache, pens, and pencils on an outdoor sketch
During my outdoor sketch workshop at Historic Yellow Springs this week, students and I experienced clouds, humidity, blazing sun, and finally heavy rain as we fled to the studio porch to share our sketches with one another! Read on for the whole story, plus…
Outdoor sketching tips
New features on Artist’s Cheat Sheet
Workshops I’m excited to share.
Sketching from photos?
Myr, Elisabeth, Johanna, and I spent the morning talking about the theory of sketching outdoors—and how it is not at all like painting from a reference image in the studio. Here are some of the main differences:
Photos limit the colors that your eyes can perceive on location.
Real life is frameless—and unpredictable! Lighting changes; subjects move. Rain makes a surprise appearance.
When sketching outdoors, all the senses are immersed in the surrounding environment. A sketch from life records these unique memories, which can then be “replayed” when viewing the sketch later on.
My students and I also briefly touched on the properties of gouache and watercolors, mainly how they work nicely with other materials like colored pencil, ink, and graphite. (Check out the article collections on my homepage for more on that.)
Then, after a great lunch at Life’s Patina cafe next door (spinach quiche, coffee, and a strawberry tostada) we headed outdoors try it out.
Find your spot
Outside, the humidity was like a warm, wet sponge. Clouds were looming, and rain was disappearing and reappearing on the hourly forecast. Part of sketching outside is betting on what you can accomplish in the amount of time allotted by the weather!
Myr chose a place under the porch where she could observe a rose bush (and be sheltered from rain if it ever did come).
Johanna sat nearby, facing a gravel driveway leading to a forest.
On the other end of the painting studio, Elisabeth and I sketched beside one another: She focused on the area around the ceramics kiln and woodshed across the road, and I was looking down the road toward a bright, yellow street sign and a row of parked vehicles.
Work big to small
When the scene feels too complicated, try squinting your eyes to reduce everything to basic masses of dark and light. I began on Strathmore toned gray paper with a water-soluble orange pencil and came up with this (this is a pretty accurate reproduction—I forget to photograph the sketchbook):
The composition includes two darker, triangular areas flanking a lighter-colored, diagonal road. I simplified the cars into a series of boxes and added a few key shapes like the road signs, a brightly-lit bush on the left, and a stone retaining wall on the right.
Below you can see how I began to lay in broad areas of darker green and lighter blue-gray gouache and watercolor (I mixed the two). The pencil partly dissolved, weaving threads of orange color throughout. I looked forward to adding the pop of bright yellow for the diamond-shaped sign.
Sketch with me outdoors
By the way, I hope you can sketch outdoors with me this summer. I have an upcoming sketch workshop at the Daniel Boone Homestead on June 28, plus another at a historic wagon works (tour included), and a couple more dates at GoggleWorks (an urban arts campus). Register for any of them here. If you have any questions, just leave me a comment! (A few more workshops are mentioned at the end.)
Art share
Now let’s see what everyone created. The workshop ended at 4pm, and I wanted to spend the last few minutes doing an art share on the cozy porch. Perfect timing, too, as raindrops began to fall at 3:50, and before we were done moving everything back onto the porch it was a downpour! Wow!
So we sat on the stone floor of the porch where it was dry and safe from the deluge (but where we could still enjoy the smells and sounds of the rainstorm); and we brought out the sketches and cheered each other on.
Zoungy’s sketch (that’s me)
Let’s start with my sketch: After I built up some density of color with gouache and watercolor, I went in with black ink to crisp up details in the street signs, stone wall, and around the wheel wells. I used white gel pen to brighten up highlights on top of the stone wall and spots on the cars. Lastly, some colored pencils and paint splatters added texture to the road, and then I was finished.
Elisabeth’s sketch
Elisabeth painted the shaded ceramics kiln area and structures across the road. My favorite thing about her sketch is how she used a consistently heavy mark, and bold, thick shapes throughout. I feel like real, dappled light is slanting through the trees onto the roof. The trunks at left and right create a frame, inviting us to approach the partly hidden building. Elisabeth says she may go in with darker dry media to refine the architecture even more.
Johanna’s sketch
Johanna used dabs of transparent watercolor, leaving plentiful gaps of dry white paper in-between. This allowed her to switch between colors quickly because she didn’t need to wait for one color to dry before starting on another (this reminds me of my friend Frieda’s work, from New York City Urban Sketchers). The gaps create a “sparkle” effect, showing cleanness and simplicity of paint application. I also like the splatter on the gravel road, and tasteful shifts between cooler and warmer neutral colors.
Myr’s sketch
Watercolors can be bold or delicate, and Myr has chosen a delicate approach to this watercolor of a rose bush. I like how she built up the color softly and gradually, which gives a dreamy, cloud-like effect. The subdued palette provides an ideal background for the main subject, which are the rose blooms. The pops of magenta are created with simple but smart dabs of the brush tip, and they are very effective representations of flowers. The purple allium is a nice touch as well.
Free resources, meet online, summer workshops
That’s it for sketching outside at Historic Yellow Springs! But while you’re here…
For free and paid readers, I have a new Free Articles collection and a new Artist’s Resource List (links to more free learning/making materials), both links are located in the navigation bar of my homepage.
Paid subscribers will soon be invited to enjoy a new feature, Office Hours. Basically we’ll make art together and chat! I hope you’ll join—just tap ‘subscribe’ below.
And, I just added three more exciting workshops to my Linktree including:
These promise to be fun. See you there!