Tip of the Month - July 2002

Driving from Quebec City north to Lac St. Jean, I came upon this scene. It was misty and the road was dangerous. I could only stop long enough to take a quick snapshot.

From this photo, I drew a contour sketch and mapped out the compositional movement. Everything was there. I had a lazy S movement. An S movement in a landscape helps the viewer to move into the scene. If the S movement is lazy, the scene will be explored more slowly.

I drew a second contour drawing to simplify the land forms. The idea was to eliminate small disjointed shapes.

The third drawing was created in values. I was looking for a variety of values with a small quanity of light value which would be emphasized by the middle and dark values. I wanted the lightest light to touch the darkest dark.

The final challenge was to choose the format that best expressed my visual intent. I do not format my sketches which allows me to see one sketch in different ways.

From these sketches ROUTE 175 NORTH was painted.

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