Quick landscape study with an experimental palette

Here’s a landscape sketch of a calm lake scene in a park, I thought it might be fun to see what my process for this was. Currently I don’t sketch directly on location, but I know the area well, and how I approach these sketches would be very similar to my process when sketching outside.

I start all my landscape sketches by asking myself what I find interesting about that scene – if it doesn’t touch me or activate my imagination in some way, there’s no point in painting it. Then I think about how I can communicate this, what is it that I want to show, how can I bring it across. Do I have to choose a certain format, colors, how do I bring out the light? You can play through all of these options without touching a pen, or you can explore them visually in small thumbnails. This often helps because you’ll get a direct impression of what works and what doesn’t in a sketch.

What I liked about this scene was the light and the reflections – as simple as that. I remember it was a very calm sunny day, and people were just chilling on benches and watches the swans on the lake. Often it’s almost harder to recreate such an atmosphere later from the photo.

I tested a some new colors, so my pigment choices for this sketch were a bit experimental. I still included some go-to colors like cerulean blue, used here for a very light sky and the reflections on the water.

Next I added various shades of green, not too intense, for the trees in the back.
I painted around the building, and included a few areas of bright green, like the grass that’s in the sun. For these kind of changes within similar elements a quick tonal study can also help.

My test palette didn’t have all the colors I usually use, but I sort of enjoyed this limited color palette – it helps to unify the sketch. The reflections and some of the shadows needed a bit more contrast, so I added a slightly darker green mix on top. It’s usually fine to use the same or just slightly more subdued color for reflections on water, and the show the ripple by painting shorter strokes.

I also added colors for the building – a few blue shadows, the greenish roof (I would have loved to use a lighter turquoise for that but I stayed within my limited palette) and a bit of yellow ochre for the areas in sunlight.

For the swans on the lake I used a thin acrylic marker, the white dots stand out really well against the dark reflections. I also added more definition to the trees and brushed in a variety of colors to give the tree line a bit of visual interest and show that these are different trees – some violet, red earth, blue in the shadows. I used a combination of watercolor and colored pencils for this, and I also added a thin outline for the sketch so that it would have a frame once the tape is removed.

The finished sketch brings across this very calm, hot day with very reduced, not very intense colors. I didn’t have a bright yellow in my palette, just a pale opaque Nickel Titanate Lemon Yellow (a very interesting but slightly weird color) and a yellow ochre, so this influenced the rest of the mixes too. I’ve painted this pavilion a number of times and I find it fascinating how different it can look depending on the time of the day and the weather.

My painting time for this sketch was about 45 minutes plus drying times – in the hot sun it would probably have taken less time.