Landscape Investigation 4

This piece was an exploration into drawing with a basis in real life. I tried to capture varied landscape surrounding Mount Katahdin using different kinds of line work. I chose to depict the mountain from the air because it felt natural to me, and I relied off of only a few photographic references to get the shape of Katahdin right, using memories of the geography of Baxter State Park for the rest of the composition. I used flowy lines to capture the steep and forested slopes of the mountain, but chose to use marks that suggested topographical lines in the flatter areas, allowing the horizontal and vertical lines to clash at the base of the mountains, creating an interesting visual effect. The designs present in some areas in this piece are inspired by zentangles, which I find visually intriguing because of their eclectic mix of different shapes and values.

This piece, like the previous four, was made using black ink technical pens, brush pens as well as graphite pencil for a sketch. It was made on illustration board.

The two biggest decisions I made in this piece was to leave the sky blank and to make the background mountains completely black. I made those mountains, which were on the edge of the sky, completely black to increase contrast with the blank sky, and I left the sky blank to allow more contrast in the piece as a whole.