Landscape exercises

A lonely grave sat upon a hill

This was my first attempt at the tonal block landscapes and I ended up relying on the shapes more than I would have liked to, I like the end product and I tried to stillhave an elemt of story to the piece even if its just a simple exercise as I prefer to put some kinda of storytelling into things I have freedom with  and  I think that it did come across here. 

 The shading on the grave I think helped the simple stone siluhette that I used be more recognisable s a grave rather than just a rock and the brush I used had some texture that complemented the texture of a stone so it wasn't just a block of light.

church landscape based on one from my hometown

In this one I mainly used shapes for the background and pained the archway myself based off a real church arch from my hometown seen in the reference below, but I tried to simplify it as much as possible and use only two shades.

Hidden garden 

 

In this piece I used more of a mix of painetd details and shapes to help build the scene. I wanted to try and include more texture in this one which you might be able to see from the shed building in the background and the path leading up to the arch. This piece however I think could be improved by adding some more highlights to have more contrast in the scene as it feels a bit flatter than I'd like it to be.

Caravan under the clouds

For this piece I wanted to use really simple shading and shapes, focusing more on the flow of the shapes and not relying on complicated shading and textures to communicated form. Although it does look simple I still like this piece as it has a nice flow to it and and the contrast really helped to better inform things such as the shape of the caravan and the fence in the foreground, but if I were to re do this I would try an add more detail into the grass and it doesn't look three dimensional.

Starry wanderer

This was the last piece I did and I tried to tie together what I learnt from the other pieces such as having very simple shaing in some areas and more texture and detail in others which helped to direct attention towards cetain areas such as the little rodside shop and star street lamps. I also used tone to direct the attention along the path as the street lamps with the bright white stars all lead down the path to the small figure which I also painted in a pure white. 

I was very happy with the way I was able to use details such as small light particles around the stars to make the scene look more magical and I also think i did well with the effect of the lights on the stall and sign board as the street light would cause light to reflect off the side so including this helped set them in the scene much better.

I tried to make the trees look more intresting by having the trunk twist and have swirling bark pattern throughout as it gives it a more fantasy like feel which helped inform the kind of setting the scene was in .

Overall I am quite happy with the tonal landscapes I did for this task as I was able to explore a range of different ways to create a scene using different techniques and the last piece was a good way for me to pull them all together and learn from the mistakes I made in the ones before.