Monday, February 2, 2015

Sketchbook pages 1/2015

We had a nice snowstorm yesterday (with a lot more forecast for tomorrow night) so I decided to go out with the pochade box and do an oil sketch. I went to the Hadley dike along the Connecticut River and only after walking down the path aways and starting to set up my paintbox did I realize I'd forgotten the tripod! LOL. I also realized that there was a bitter cold wind coming off of the river and I wouldn't be able to stay there for very long. I figured it was a good opportunity to use the centerfold pano in the toned paper section of the Montanapolitan Croptic.
I could only get a very rough sketch in before the threat of frostbitten fingers drove me back to the car. This is with the Sakura Gelly Roll 08 white rollerball pen.







I also snapped a photo to refer to later:





Here is the finished version, based on the photo and memory. My frappéd brain forgot about setting the focal length to approximate the human eye, so this is a crop from a much larger wide angle shot. Notice how the distant end of the dike appears much smaller in the photo than in the finished sketch, which incorporates elements of both the original rough and the photo ref.

I wanted to get the feeling of how bright and clear and lethally cold it was: