This project will give you practice creating a sky scene that has a lot of appeal. Start by reviewing the finished drawing. It will give you a better understanding of what we are creating. It is a beautiful combination of light and dark created with blending and lifting. While it may look intense, it is not as complicated as you might think.
When drawing skies, remember that the atmosphere moves horizontally. When creating the patterns of sky in a drawing, you must apply the pencil lines horizontally to match this.
.5mm mechanical pencil with 2B lead
kneaded eraser
ruler
smooth bristol paper
tortillion
Starting at the bottom, apply the darkness to the foreground area. This gives you the horizon line. Then move up to the sky area and apply the patterns with horizontal pencil strokes as shown.
Continue using the horizontal strokes to deepen the patterns. They need to be extremely dark, so use firm pressure on the pencil.
Use a stump to blend the drawing. A tortillion is too small and will not blend a large area such as this smoothly. A stump is much better for a project this size.
When blending tones with the stump, use the same horizontal strokes you did to apply the pencil. Blending sometimes will make things appear lighter, so reapply your pencil if necessary to keep the tones dark. You will need to blend again, but you can repeat this process as often as needed.
Even though there are areas of white in the drawing, it is important to lightly blend these areas to a light gray. Light always looks better when it’s lifted instead of left out.
Once everything is blended, use the kneaded eraser to lift out the white areas. Using the horizontal strokes is important when lifting out the cloud areas and the lighter areas of the sky. Do the sun rays last, overlapping everything else. They should radiate outward, straight, like the spokes on a wheel.
When the sky is finished, add the small silhouettes of the trees in the foreground.
With many different types of trees in nature, the only way to depict them well is by practicing. Drawing all types of trees and plant life will give you better skills for drawing scenery. Each drawing will have different elements to capture. What I have offered so far are just suggestions, not hard-and-fast rules. Each drawing will be different according to the subject matter and the lighting affecting it. This drawing is a perfect example of breaking the traditional rules.
LEOPARD IN A TREE
Graphite on smooth bristol
7” × 10” (18cm × 25cm)
I used blending as a way of creating the illusion of layers in the tree. Creating gray tone behind the darkest tones and blurring out the shapes makes it appear as if there are multiple layers of leaves. The ones that are closest are larger. Their shapes are more distinct, and I made them as dark as I possibly could. If I had just placed black leaves upon white paper, the illusion of depth would be lost.
Because of the view, we do not have all of the layers usually seen in a landscape drawing. The elevated perspective reduces the layers you are seeing. Combined with extreme lighting, which makes the leopard and the tree appear as silhouettes, you now have only background and foreground images to deal with.