Sketching before taking the photo

I had made up of couple of small plastic trays for a selection of my pastel  to use in the field on my trip through the Kimberleys. I only used them a couple of times, and not so successfully. The little plastics trays where fine, a great size for portability. As well as the pastels I made up a “soft” sketching kit with charcoal, compressed graphite, woodless pencil and conte. These are traditional sketching media but somewhat fragile, so not exactly field friendly.

However because the kit is nice and small, I’ve been trying it out as a way to prepare composition/notan sketches for my pathway project. My intention is to make quick composition sketches and possibly a few alternatives that incorporate the tonal balance BEFORE I take any photos. So I am thinking/seeing more like a “plein air” painter preparing a new canvas. The charcoal is quick and gives a strong contrast but it smudges easily, the compressed graphite is good but delivers a very pencil draw tonal range (its hard to get the deep darks). The woodless pencils seemed ideal, I have two hardnesses HB and 4B. They gave me the fast loose sketching of the main shapes and a decent spread from light to dark.

The composition was fine and I wanted to emphasise the lead in of the pathway in the lightest tonesand the contrast of the intersecting but hidden path and bush behind it. The strong dark blocks of the bush on the right hand side blocks this in a balanced sort of way. The lacy effect if the overhanging tree had some potential so I went to a wider angle and took a series of vertical (portrait orientation) bracketed images going from –2.0 EV to +2.0 EV. I have just recently purchase Aurora HDR 2018 and wanted to test it out. The default result was pleasing but having a notan sketch beside me when I did the post processing guided me to set the tonal balance to better match with what I saw. It also prompted to do a crop closer to the original framing of my sketches.

INKtober and now for something completely different

October seems to be the month for Sketching, flickr are running INKtober (so expect my photofeed there to suddenly become drawings), the YouTube SketchBookSkool are running monthly sketching themes on Instagram (some background on @oz_endless_summer) and pastel artist Marla Baggetta is also recommending a month long sketchbook challenge.

Given that I was unable to keep up a year long daily sketch routine last year I figured I should at least give a one month of drawing & posting a reasonable chance. So expect less photos and more drawings, wish me luck and get drawing yourself.

Looking Forward, before looking Back

This time of year most folk on the social nets are looking back over the year that was, which is fine but I am focused on looking forward I am already well into the planning of new projects for next year.

First and most significant is my endless summer in 2017 which is a private Art and Photography project visiting and recording some icon parts of the landscape in the sunshine. This brings about some technical issues which many artists and photographers struggle with. How to capture and photography the beauty of the harsh Australia Light. You can follow on my travels and work process at a few social media places including @oz_endless_summer on instagram, @ozendlesssummer on Twiter and  An Endless Summer group on flickr

The second project is a Photographers Sketch Book, with is following Ted Forbe’s assignments on his You Tube channel “The art of Photograpy” Whilst the sketchbook is something very physical, you can follow along both its content and ideas behind the images on my tumblr sub-blog mapopaj

Also there are likely to be plenty of posts relevant to these projects in this blog and my normal instagram profile @apimageo

Photographers using a Sketch Book

The idea of a photographer using a sketch book is not new. There is a wonderful scene in Alain de Botton’s documentary about his book “The Art of Travel” (this sequence starts at 40:30 in) where he takes a bus load of Japanese tourists to a quaint English village and then takes their cameras away and gives them sketchbooks!

 

This video link above expands on his inspiration for this actions,  based on the writings of John Ruskin

Taking Notan into the Field

It would seem I am being unreasonable to ask photographers to carry a sketchbook, even a small one, when they go out to photograph. Yet just a simple notan sketch can be a great aid to seeing better composition and understanding of tones.

So here is a simple example. I’m looking at a simple path I have walk along many times, with no obvious subject. So first I prepared a little sketch in 5 tones or a composition noting a couple of points of interest. The tree trunk on the right and the shadows on the path. How to I know this? They are the only places with a full sharp contrast between dark and light. I also consider the balance between lights and darks within the mass of mid-tone. The horizon line / apparent vanishing point is close to the centre (not at the rule of thirds intersections!) but the tones are informally balanced. Not a masterpiece but has potential.

Looking at the lightest values there are actually only two place that could be considered almost white, the tree trunk on the left and the distant section of path. The sky is a deeper blue because I am using a polarizing filter.

The shadows in the foreground are darker tan a mid-grey but lighter than blank. Perhaps even a bit darker than the fourth grey tone, which roughly correspond with the range of the shadow slider in lightroom.

I’m now ready to take my photo (see  my next blog post)