Somewhere in the Middle

Recently I shared a photo a friend had taken. Do you remember it? I’d asked her permission to use the photo as a reference for a landscape painting. Although I haven’t — yet — gotten around to painting the scene, I did use the photo for a “quick sketch” recently.

I mentioned then that when she gave me permission to use her photography, she also sent two additional photos she’d taken that same day showing slightly different views of the same scene.

Yesterday, while at the retinologist’s office — my husband’s appointment this time — I took my sketchbook along with me. I find it relaxing to sketch while we’re waiting.

I had enjoyed making the first “quick sketch” of the scene — a tree along a river bank — and so I browsed the gallery on my phone and found another of the pictures my friend had sent. This time, I did a little more than a “quick sketch”. I’s not what would be considered a “refined, finished drawing”, but something somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

I was happy with this “not-a-quick-sketch but not-a-finished-drawing”.

It has its “sketchy” elements — the looseness of the trees in the distance. It has some characteristics of a “real” drawing — such as the shading and a bit of texture on the foreground tree. I made a good attempt at conveying the impression of loose leaves scattered about, and some sense of movement or flow in the river.

I did attempt to add a bit of shading in the sky to represent gray clouds — something I do intend to include when I paint this scene — but in this “in-between” sort of sketchy drawing, I couldn’t get quite the right effect.

When I made the first quick sketch previously, it felt good. I do like “sketching out” loose ideas of landscape scenes before I paint them. Doing this slightly-more-detailed sketch felt even better.

I have done some graphite landscapes — actual complete, finished drawings — such as this one:

I’ve also gone through William F. Powell’s book on drawing landscapes, but I’ve never developed any real confidence. I think, though, that this is something I’d like to work on, so perhaps I’ll use the third photo my friend sent and see if I can actually complete a “real graphite landscape drawing” from it.

If not, that’s all right, really. While I do want to improve my basic “drawing skills”, I’m not striving to become a great graphite artist. For me, drawing is a learned skill, not an art form in itself. It’s a skill that I use as a basis for my landscape paintings and other little art projects I do from time to time. As long as I develop enough drawing skill to achieve the results I need, that’s good enough for me.

Maybe that’s a bad attitude in some ways. I recall hearing the expression that “Good enough should never be good enough,” but that wasn’t said in regard to my art. For my purposes, I think “good enough” is “good enough”. I’ve moved past the stage of really bad, unrecognizable drawings (oh, yes, I’ve made a few of those), but it’s doubtful I’ll ever reach the level of highly-refined and realistic drawings (which I’m not sure I would ever really want to create), so as with my little sketch today, I seem to be finding myself somewhere in the middle with my drawing abilities, and I think that’s a good place to be.