Another Mixture of Media

Addressing the same subject using different drawing and painting mediums continues to interest me. Last week we were visiting friends in southwest Virginia's beautiful Alleghenies. Our friends live

"Down on the Cowpasture River," 5x8, casein on paper

next to a pristine river called the Cowpasture. It runs clear and sweet over a pebbly bottom, free of the murk and pollution of many others. During the week I had a chance to paint and sketch a big sycamore that stands next to their home. I did several images of the tree and river bank in ink, pencil, and casein.

The first is a casein painting of that sycamore tree. I laid it out with light graphite. Across the river is a stony cliff that rises about thirty feet, topped by mature trees. The color of the water is actually mostly the reflection of those stony heights. Casein is useful because of it's rapid drying and marked opacity. You can see how well it covers lower layers by checking out the foliage to the upper left. This part of Virginia is in the oldest mountains of North America, worn down by millennia.

"On the Cowpasture," 3.5x5.5, ink on paper

Here's another image of the same scene, done in pen and ink on toned paper. It's half a page, about 4x6 or so. This is the same two trees, river, and cliff. The sun was in a similar place too. In this one the size of the sycamore trunk is exaggerated, and the foliage a bit different. In pen and ink drawings, particularly when using a technical pen, like this one, I nearly always use different caliber tips and employ cross-hatch and other techniques to suggest gradations of values.

"Across the Pasture," watercolor and ink, 3.5x5.5

Besides the river and trees, I had a chance to make pictures of the classic landscape subject, a silo and barn, that lay the opposite direction from our friends' river house. The first is a watercolor sketch done in a pocket-size sketchbook. The land rises to the west and these buildings are on one of the first pieces of higher ground above the river. The farmer was cutting hay while we were there.

"Across the Pasture, in ink" 3.5x5.5

Finally here's a second image of the silo and barn, done with pen and ink on the same page as the ink drawing above. In this particular drawing my interest was to isolate the silo and barn to study their structure and textures. Like the other ink drawing above, it's about half of a sketchbook page. Again, there are differences in the two--the size of the barn in particular. And although there is rising ground and a tree line behind them, the two buildings were the focus of this little drawing. The dark glen behind them and a small tree in the far distance helped to show depth.

---
Previous similar posts:
Media Madness