Tim Oliver's Sketchbook: Glass White River Ranch-Step by Step

January 18, 2013

Glass White River Ranch-Step by Step

I'm having fun taking a more methodical approach to my watercolor attempts. Photographing the process has helped me to slow down and accomplish the work step by step. It's been great fun for me...hope you enjoy!

The subject is the headquarters ranch house at the Glass Ranch in Crosby County, Texas. I've been spending a lot of time out there on a landscape design and installation project. The watercolor was painted in the studio from a photograph.

I constructed the sketch in pencil from direct observation of the photo. In this case I did not do a value sketch since I was working from the picture. The values were rather simple and readily apparent in the photo. The fence in the foreground was added...it wasn't in the real scene.

I began by painting the foreground wash adding some darker values wet-in-wet to allow them to bleed. Indian Yellow with Payne's Gray and Burnt Umber.

Washing in the sky...Ultramarine, Cobalt, Payne's Gray and Winsor Violet.

Deepening the foreground values...

Laying in the base color of the tree canopies..Indian Yellow

Adding darks in windows and red background barn

Beginning to concentrate on the house a little....

Tree trunks...

Working on the trees..

Detail landscape work around the house...

Foreground fence...

Finishing touches...barbed wire, grass, a little atmospheric spatter, deeper shadows....

Signed and done....

1 comment:

topSpot | Find your top spot hereFebruary 12, 2013 at 10:29 AM
Great post and good pictures..

I really like this blog! :D
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Great quote from landscape architect, illustrator, teacher, fine artist and friend, Richard Scott

"Sketching isn't just drawing pretty pictures. It's seeing and reacting to a subject, then communicating not just how it looks, but how it feels. In doing so, you are forced to delve deeply into a place, the shapes, the colors, the values, and how all of these combine to give a feeling-a feeling that you try to capture and communicate to others. No other activity will teach you more about design.

Although it's great fun, it's never easy. But the payoff is a deep, INTENSE experience every time you do it. It improves your focus. It improves your thinking. It improves your creativity. It is absolutely critical that EVERY designer do it, and do it often." Richard Scott, ASLA, ASAI
http://www.graphicsteacher.com

Great quote from architect and watercolorist Michael Borne,AIA

"No one is born a fully developed artist, and yet we are all natural-born artists. Non-believers should should observe a class of kindergarten students with finger paints. Like the children, I continue to love the feel of applying graphite, ink or rich pigment to good quality paper. No digital tool has been able to match that thrill for me. My enjoyment of the craft is in the process of the painting rather than the finished product. The more I paint, the more I discover the colors, shapes and beautiful randomness of nature. I never seem to tire of this elusive craft we call watercolor painting."
Michael Borne,AIA

Michael is an architect and watercolorist in Prosper, Texas
His work can be seen and purchased here:
http://www.mborne.com/ and here:
www.flickr.com/photos/bruneleschi

Great Quote from landscape architect and friend James Richards, FASLA

"Why draw? In an ever more digital world, with all of the technology available to us(as landscape architects), is hand drawing still relevant?....As more tech-savvy graduates enter the marketplace and better visualization tools become available, my work as a consulting designer-diagramming and sketching on the "front end" of complex projects-has exploded. I'm hand drawing more now than ever in my 30-year career. I'm convinced that this demand isn't because I'm a particularly gifted designer, but because the ability to capture visual impressions by hand, very quickly, is increasingly rare. And with the loss of these skills, our design firm clients tell us, a measure of spontaneity and creative freshness may have been lost in the process....Why draw? Not to become great illustrators but, to unlock creative ideas through reconnecting mind, eye and hand."

James Richards,FASLA, cofounder of Townscape, Inc., Ft. Worth, TX
http://www.townscape.com/
www.flickr.com/photos/jamesrichardsdrawings

Great quote from Jim Leggitt,FAIA

"Why do we still draw? Over the past two decades, there have been incredible advances in computer hardware, software and other high tech equipment. Good old-fashioned quickly generated hand drawing, however, has suffered.

No computer rendering can communicate the way a real drawing can, but many of us have lost-or never developed-the ability to draw by hand. I've learned that you can have the best of both worlds.

Sketches and drawings generated by hand are effective communication tools that allow others to quickly and easily visualize what you design. It is as important as ever-maybe even more important in this age of computers-to be able to capture ideas in the form of confident, believable hand drawings and sketches."

Jim Leggit, FAIA
Jim is an architect, urban planner and illustrator in Denver, Colorado.

His book, Drawing Shortcuts, 2nd edition can be purchased here: http://www.drawingshortcuts.com/

Great quote from Frank Ching

"I have come to believe that iteration — constant and repetitive practice — is important to learning visual and drawing skills. We can learn more from doing many smaller sketches rather than one or two larger drawings. I also think that drawing from observation, on location, and developing visual acuity should provide the basis for drawing from the imagination in design. All designers should understand that drawing is a language with which we communicate our ideas and observations. My palette is very simple: a fountain pen and a sketchbook. While I admire others who handle other media so well — pencils, watercolors, pastels — I have come to really love the tactile feel of an ink nib on paper and the fluidity and incisiveness of the strokes. And the abstract quality of an ink-line drawing is actually very liberating for me. Drawing occurs in the moment. All that will be required is to be present, be observant, and respond to the qualities of a place."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m740HC3WZ2ITS
Francis D. Ching, Author, Professor Emeritus-University of Washington