Landscape Painting Sketchbook Tour – Autumn 2020

I’ve been continuing to sketch landscapes in watercolor and gouache, here is an outtake from my sketchbook in autumn.

Here’s a video version of this post:

Landscape Painting Sketchbook Tour | Autumn 2020

Watch this video on YouTube.

Landscape Painting Sketchbook Tour | Autumn 2020

I usually do quick studies in a small sketchbook that is the size of my palm, and when I like the subject I do a bigger, more detailed painting of the same scene. This helps me to figure out the color scheme and the layout.
If you’ve followed by previous adventures in landscape sketching you’ll see I’ve changed my process for painting a bit. I’m using watercolors now more often for these small sketches, and I work a bit longer on the pencil sketch before I start painting. I enjoy the lightness of the sketches, and I can still get some opacity if I want by adding white gouache. What’s your favorite technique right now?

In this scene, like in most other that I’ll show you, I really liked how the light fell through the trees and across the road. It is interesting to paint a light background and a darker foreground, since usually it is the other way round.

I tried to really unify the background colors in this sketch and bring out the trees. I also tried to show the different layers, there are trees in the background that are barely visible and then overlapping branches and trunks that show the depth in this sketch.

The next sketch has similar colors, but there’s a small stream running through the image that picks up a lot of reflections from the trees above. I find rendering water really tricky sometimes, and looking back this probably would have benefitted from a bit more contrast.

In these two sketches I focused mainly on the beautiful autumn colors and the foggy atmosphere. They were done really quickly. I’m usually trying to apply more faded colors in the background to show that it’s farther away.

For this page, I took a walk in the park, and I added ink outlines that I can paint over. I have a fountain pen set up with waterproof ink for that. Having more prominent lines means that you don’t have to be as specific and neat with the painting part, so it’s a bit quicker.

I really like how the colors in these sketches make the scene look like it’s summer, when in reality it was late November. But a sunny day. Recently, I’m spending more time on my pencil sketch and then just add color very lightly over it. I used the same technique for the cemetery gate and for the sketch with the single tree.

I’m still experimenting with gouache, and seeing how I can achieve more detail in my sketches. If you remember my summer sketches they were very rough with bold brush strokes. For some subjects this approach won’t work that well, and I’ve been looking at subjects that I used look for as photography subjects – usually very detailed, entangled trees with a lots of small bits and pieces. This of course takes a long time to paint, and I’m trying out different ways to render these scenes in a way I like. I haven’t found it yet. These kind of sketches aren’t my favorites but I usually learn a lot from making them.

Another thing that I enjoy lately is having more man-made things in my scenes – houses, church towers, masts. I find they add another story element to a scene, and also give a sense of scale. I often like to look for elements that can turn an every-day scene into something that has a story hidden in it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this sketchbook tour. Looking back on all of these, I really miss the colors of autumn (gone now, replaced with mud and fog – beautiful in their own way) and not being able to go hiking as much – we are in the second lockdown here and mostly staying at home, and I’m not doing so well. Putting these posts together is always a reminder for me how many interesting places I visited this year, even though I didn’t travel anywhere.