Landscape Investigation 9

This piece is a revision of two previous pieces, both which included a view—from land—of ocean and then land and then sky. I have always been inspired by that feeling of the four layers: the rocks on the coast at the bottom, then the ocean, then more land, and then finally sky. Like the first two, this piece was also based upon a memory of a view. Two summers ago, my family rented a schooner and went sailing around penobscot bay on the coast of Maine. The view from this piece is based upon looking from the rocks on Deer Isle across Eggemoggin reach to the mainland. It incorporates both the emphasis on the sky that appears in Across the Sound but also the focus on clouds like in From the Rocks. The placement of the tree on the right side was a reference back to the first work of this investigation, In the Shade of the Saguaro as well as the choice to use a warped perspective.

This piece was made using prismacolor colored pencils and white gel pen on bristol.

At first this piece was intended to be far more realistic, but as I started the sky I looked at my original sketch and was inspired by the flowy and line-heavy style. As a result as I worked, the piece became more line heavy and more abstract. This can be seen in both the detail in the rocks and the dark lines in the sky. Towards the end, I felt like the middle section of the piece, the water and island, needed more detail so I added in white gel as detail on the waves, which to me really gave the piece a feeling of completion.