Landscape Sketching Course
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Feeling daunted at the thought of drawing outside?
It seems laughable, doesn’t it? To be scared of drawing.
However, with 80% of people scared of public speaking, it’s not surprising that public sketching can cause those same knots in the stomach, butterflies and anxiousness.
Standing outside with your sketchbook, eagle-eyed onlookers behind you can unnerve even the most confident amongst us.
It’s easy to see how your sketchbook can stay firmly closed. But this perception of what people think is often misplaced.
They’re not judging you, they’re admiring you.
This landscape course is all about drawing on location, learning how to quickly capture the atmosphere and mood of a landscape like an artist and taking the next step from sketching at home to sketching outdoors.
With over 3 hours of tuition, you’ll learn to combine on-location drawing demonstrations with drawing theory and studio-based drawing tutorials, be introduced to practical materials you’ll need to draw outdoors as well as discovering a 7-point checklist to create successful landscape sketches.
Working through these simple step-by-step tutorials, you’ll learn how to capture, compose, and balance the scene in front of you and then take your ideas back to the studio for further refinement. You’ll develop the habit of thumbnail sketching, gathering reference information and using your sketchbook to its full advantage without feeling pressured to make every piece a finished work of art.
£57.00
- Description
- Lesson Breakdown
- Course Delivery
- Course Requirements
- What Students Say
- Student Success
- FAQs
Description
Feeling daunted at the thought of drawing outside?
Just like you, I used to suffer from a fear of sketching on location.
The insecurities that my sketchbook was being judged held me back.
What if someone looked over my shoulder to see a ‘bad’ drawing? What would they think?
That I was a bad artist, that I couldn’t draw?
It doesn’t have to be this way.
I learned that when I wanted to get something on the page quickly, I had to adapt my methods.
I decided to ‘draw’ with brush and ink, not a pencil so that the ‘drawing’ could get through that awkward stage and start to resemble the subject.
I felt more confident with a brush, the marks could be bolder, looser.
It could give the impression of a tree, a building, light and shade in easy strokes rather than laboring over a detailed pencil sketch.
It works and I believe it can help with your sketching problems, too.
I moved on from brush and ink to a much more travel-friendly toolkit that combined them both.
The SECRET behind effective landscape sketching
My ‘secret weapon’ became a Brush Pen.
I could be much freer with the marks, create detailed lines alongside broken edges and it forced me to be definite, no more erasing areas and starting again.
Making a mark and leaving it.
The brush pen combined the flow and convenience of a pen with the variety and texture of a paintbrush.
Changing your mindset from pencil to pen, and from long detailed drawings to quick expressionist sketches can revolutionize how you approach your sketching, giving yourself permission to enjoy the process and atmosphere of the sketch as much as the finished piece.
Simple principles that make your landscape sketching 100% more powerful.
However, even with the right tools many students still find they are overwhelmed by transferring a vast landscape onto a small sketchpad.
Trying to create a realistic perspective and depth, including a focal point and choosing what to draw, when there are so many potential viewpoints in a landscape, can result in frustration for the student.
I see the same compositional mistakes coming up again and again so I want to focus on the theory behind ‘how’ to choose a good composition for your drawings, the thought process I use when deciding what to include (or what to leave out) in a drawing.
I’ve developed this course to show you exactly how I approach landscape sketching, the materials I use and how you can do the same thing.
“Drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.”
Edgar Degas, Artist
What’s in the Course?
The course is a mix of real on-location sketching with studio-based lessons and concepts. So you can learn the steps in the studio and then see how they translate to the street.
- Drawing theory.
- On-location drawing demonstrations in Skye, Scotland and the Peak District, England.
- Studio-based drawing & watercolour tutorials.
- 12 follow-along drawing demonstrations (including watercolour wash drawings).
- 7-downloadable video lessons, split into separate chapters that follow on sequentially.
- Step-by-step instructional videos so that you can follow along at your own pace.
- Downloadable jpeg reference images and drawing worksheets to work from, and a full materials list.
- Over 3 hours of detailed video instruction.
- Lifetime access, downloadable on separate devices.
Lesson Breakdown
Lesson One
Facing the Fear
A visual introduction to a smart minimalist collection of the materials you’ll need when you’re sketching on location, from sketchpads to pens.
Lesson Two
7 Key Principles
Introduction to the key principles when creating a compelling landscape sketch. Choosing a focal point, learning to be selective with your composition, changing viewpoints, how to frame your view, proportion & scale and tackling simple perspective.
Lesson Three
Putting Theory into Practice
A flat drawing versus a drawing with depth. A couple of on-location drawings in Scotland, demonstrating the importance of getting your positioning right before you even pick up the pen.
Lesson Four
From Sketch to Studio
How to get the most out of your sketchbook, from gathering reference material in detail, preliminary sketches for a painting in mind to relaxing sketches on holiday. A practical tutorial on bringing your sketchbook back to the studio and working up a drawing to a more finished piece.
Lesson Five
Capturing Changing Conditions
Learning a few basic techniques to deal with the changing landscape around you can really help when out on location.
Cloud formation sketches followed by a tonal tutorial on water and reflections.
Lesson Six
Drawing Elements of the Landscape
Looking at how to approach drawing individual elements of the landscape so you can include them with confidence into your sketches. Demonstrating houses and buildings, rocks and mountains, trees and foliage.
Lesson Seven
Creating Mood & Atmosphere
Exploring quick ways to create mood and atmosphere into your sketches. Experimenting with different mediums to establish a tonal range, pen & wash, watercolours and marker. The final piece challenges your skills with a vast landscape, bringing all the lessons together.
Course Delivery
I’ve taken care to film everything from my perspective so you can see exactly what I’m doing as we go through the entire drawing process in real-time with over 3 hours of video instruction, alongside full-colour photographs and drawing guides.
How is the course delivered?
- 7 Downloadable Step-by-Step Video Lessons – over 3 hours of video instruction that once downloaded – you have any time, anywhere access.
- A ‘Getting Started & Materials List PDF‘ – which includes your materials list.
- A ‘Your Landscape Drawing Downloads’ PDF guide – which includes all the reference images used throughout the course.
- The video files are large (2.5 GB in total) so you need a broadband internet connection and enough space on your computer hard drive.
Please note: You will not receive a DVD
Cut by the Artist
I filmed, edited, and coloured the course myself (with a little help from Vanessa!) rather than working with a production company.
Artists have different needs than editors so I wanted to cut the course like an artist, showing you exactly what I wanted to see when I was learning. I show all the real-time pencil marks so you don’t miss a step.
Course Requirements
Requirements for the Course
A broadband internet connection – the files sizes for the video lessons are quite large (2.5GB in total) so can take a while to initially download (depending on your internet speed.) Once downloaded, they are yours to keep forever, watch without buffering or take to the garden and watch away from an internet connection!
Enough free space on your Computer or iPad –You can download the files to a separate USB stick if you need more storage.
A Colour Printer – to print out the reference images or access to a Print Shop.
Glossy Photo Printer Paper – I use Epson Photo Glossy.
A love of tea & cake (optional, but some might say essential)
What Students Say
Just completed your landscape sketching course – top notch. Not easy to find a quality artist who can teach. The online medium suits you. Time to start on the light and shadow course.
Rodger, Landscape Sketching Course
I had a lot of fun with this landscape sketching course. As this is my main point of interest, I will keep looking back to this video to glean more of what I may have missed before.Thank you so much for this, I really enjoyed it and looking forward to the next course!
Aya, Landscape Sketching Course
I really wanted to send a note of appreciation for your courses and the carefully thought out way in which they are structured and especially the up-close way in which they are filmed and without unnecessary chat. It really is like being present at a studio demonstration. I think your courses are way ahead of anything else I’ve found online.
Oh, I’ve also attached a photo of the final watercolour of Staffin Bay from the landscape sketching course – which turned out quite well, I think. I was thrilled to see the video films of the Skye landscape which were so evocative because I haven’t been to Skye since I was a teenager. Thanks again!
June, Landscape Sketching Course
Dear Will,Thank you so much.Your lectures are carefully crafted. The lessons are to the point and purposeful and yet listening and watching feelscalm because of your calm delivery. The video footage is of high quality and the music is placed where it belongs.Yours is the most professional class I have come across.I am only midway through but I have already learned key lessons that I was able to use when I did my first sketch outdoors last week. I knew what to look for and what to avoid. You help your students read the landscape and see nature with fresh eyes. In my case, your class helped me reconcile myself with the outdoors which I had previously experienced as dangerous and unwelcoming.So, thanks again for being such a careful and attentive teacher.Nushin – Landscape sketching course
Student Success
FAQs
Landscape Sketching Course
No, there is no time limit, you can watch them as many times as you like.
The course is a series of downloadable video lessons, once they are downloaded they are yours to keep forever. If you change computer in the future just drop me an email and I’ll send you through some fresh links.
You can watch the lessons and courses as many times as you like and have lifetime access. If you change computer in the future just drop me an email and I’ll send you some fresh links through.
Yes, you can download to an iPad using Files App, or the free app called ‘Documents’. Without either of these apps, you will not be able to download directly to an iPad.
You can also download the video lessons to multiple devices (home PC, laptop etc) and if your storage space is running low on your laptop, you can download to a separate USB stick.
No, not at the moment.
The courses are available as a download only, there is not a streamable option.
If you only have an iPad you need to use either the Files App or the free Documents App to download and have enough space on your device
But there is one exception.
If you open the download links in the Safari browser on an iPad, Safari will give you an option to View or Download, if you click View, you can watch the videos without downloading.
Not hugely, I’ve kept the material list as small as possible.
For the painting courses, I try to keep the colour palette small and use the same base colours for many of the other courses. I demonstrate with artist quality paints which have a higher pigment ratio so a little goes a long way.
Absolute beginner.
Yes, there are reference images and drawing worksheets to work from. You can print out the images in A4 size allowing you to work 1:1 with your reference image (a classical technique called ‘sight-size’)
An aspiring sketcher who has tried a few drawings indoors but wants to progress to sketching outside.