LESSON PLANS SUMMER TERM 2024 (1st half) Lesson 3: Simplifying a landscape, making the drawing.

In this lesson I'm asking my students to make a drawing of a landscape specifically for a certain way of working with watercolour next week. It's a technique I call the 'dry channel' technique - more on that next lesson!

Summer Term 2024 (1st half) Lesson 3: Simplifying a landscape, making the drawing.

·         You have a landscape image on your table.

·         Look for (and possibly very carefully fold) the halfway cross-sections so that you know what sits on the middle point of your landscape From that middle point, begin an outline drawing. Look for greater shapes, be prepared to make choices about the shapes you simplify and the details you leave out!

·         You’re looking for the shapes and areas that help to describe distance.

·         You’re looking for the way the three distances (near middle, far) stitch together.

·         Once you’ve got a simple outline drawing, look for the shapes you’ll fill with tone, using your pencil on its side.

·         You can use an eraser to negotiate light places.

·         Use your eraser to find a tiny thin channel of clean paper between the main shapes (not between the smaller shapes).

·         Keep it simpler rather than too complex.

Next lesson: This is your working drawing for a watercolour based on the dry channel technique (my own phrase – you probably won’t find it online). It entails leaving a tiny dry channel of unpainted paper between the main shapes and using wet-into-wet within the main shapes. Bring today’s drawing, bring watercolours, good watercolour paper and brushes.