Continuing from my previous post, here are some sketches I made during some of our day trips out away from Port Angeles. Most of these were also made very quickly onsite and finished up at home. Not everyone in our group had the patience for hanging around, understandably. I'm definitely going to make a trip back to some of these areas with friends who have a similar slow pace to match my own.
Like the painting at the top, this one is set at Rialto Beach. Of the Olympic beaches I've been to so far, this one was not my favorite, although it certainly was very beautiful. We got up super early to drive here to catch the low tide so we could check out whatever creatures were hanging out in the tide pools. This sketchbook painting was done while waiting for the first piece to dry – working on something else simultaneously helps me avoid impatiently messing with a damp painting. Often I end up liking the more spontaneous one more.
Bogachiel Rain Forest - I drew this one super fast (like 10 or 15 minutes!) and put color on top later. The "nurse logs" of these forests stood out to me this time - when an old tree dies, new ones tend to grow directly on top of it, as you can see happening in the mossy stump in this sketch. It's really tough to capture the lushness and different species of plants intermingling in this environment, as well as capturing the feeling of being deep inside an ancient forest.
Trying to convey lushness through sketching is a tough job. It seems like you really have to draw every detail if you want it all to come through as it is in real life...but that's too much work. so I'm trying to develop shortcuts to visually communicate this, such as drawing in small pockets of detail, and punching out light areas by filling in the shadows.
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