How to draw moving landscapes

My process in four steps

Please tag any train landscapes you do with #drawmovinglandscapes -I’d love to see them!

Last newsletter I talked about my love affair with drawing landscapes from the train. This is how I go about it, and hopefully you’ll find some useful tips or inspiration.

1- Procreate. I always use digital instead of traditional materials- no smudging, no waiting for paint to dry, you can get up and move to the opposite side of the train in an instant (without having to pack lot’s of materials away), no mess, and of course no rain to ruin your device. Let’s face it, those tiny seat trays don’t leave much room for materials.

2- Look! No matter the length of the journey, I never dive in to a drawing straight away. It’s so important to get a feel for the landscape, let yourself be engulfed by it. Notice what in particular you’re drawn to on that day/ in that moment; a certain colour or texture or contour, even a specific object. Allow yourself to be drawn to it, even if it feels like a departure from what you usually do.

3- Create a colour palette. This is something I do during my journey, based on that specific landscape. After I’ve spent time observing, I create a base palette with the colours of the landscape including good contrasting tones. With a base palette I usually find all my images work nicely together and it allows you to draw quicker in the moment. I do edit this palette, it’s not a hard and fast rule to stick only to these colours, but it helps to have similar shades across your work and it makes the process faster when choosing a colour in an instant.

4- Observation/ memory/ imagination. THIS is my favourite thing about the challenge, it’s great practice for all of these techniques of drawing. Each drawing will have a different portion of these techniques and this melting pot is the height of interest for me. Sometimes I’ll have only caught a glance of something that has caught my interest, and the rest I’ll leave to my imagination. Other times I’ve held a really specific scene in my head and tried to replicate it as accurately as I can.

Every drawing will vary…

…and that’s the fun of it! Happy landscape drawing!

Don’t forget to tag any train drawings you do with this hashtag: #drawmovinglandscapes