Landscape Drawing

Purpose:

• To learn and understand perspective vocabulary;

• To demonstrate understanding of landscape perspective strategies;

• To familiarize yourself with the work of photographer Ansel Adams.

Prompts

How would you describe the quality of the lines, [or shapes, values, etc.] used in your work? Were the lines made quickly or slowly? Are they straight or curvy? Explain why you drew this way.

Primarily, the lines in my drawing are curvy due to the texture and detail that I was trying to draw on the mountain. The lines are pretty thin, but there are lots of them, so they can make up the detail of the mountains. On my trees, however, the lines curve out, and are pretty thick. When I was drawing all of these lines, I made sure to use the reference photo a lot and see what the lines looked like on Ansel's photo, so that I could mimic that the best I could on my drawing. I noticed that when I wanted certain parts of the mountain to be darker, I made thicker lines and did not of them, so that I could get a darker value. Additionally, my lines looked differently for every object in the picture. I know I mentioned the mountains and trees, but for the small branches on the left side of the photo, all of the branches looked different. Therefore, I had to observe and draw different-sized lines with different values for each branch. I drew this way so that I could achieve the most realistic copy of this picture I could.

Are you happy with your drawing? Why or why not?

I am happy with my drawing, and I think that this assignment was definitely a challenge in the right direction. This drawing was not easy. In fact, none of the Ansel Adams photos were "easy" to draw, but I think that for the amount of time given to work on it, I did as best I could. It was difficult doing all the little details on the mountain and such, but I think at the end of the day, it made me a better artist, and I was pleased with my drawing and all the hard work that went into this. Additionally, this was definitely outside of my comfort zone, considering that I prefer drawing abstract art instead of realistic art, but I truly enjoyed this assignment a lot, and was happy with the result.