Compose Your Landscape Sketches

Hi everyone, this is Matt from DrawingTutorialsOnline.com. In this Masterclass lesson, we are going to analyze together the sketches of Isaac Leviton. This is a great complement to the previous Masterclass of his paintings. A lot to learn in this short video, so let's get started. Alright, here we go. Let's get started now with this Isaac Leviton Masterclass, specifically his sketches, which like I said in the intro, is just a great complement to his paintings. Now, I don't want to get into the history again with him. I would encourage you to come on over here to wikiart.org, type in Isaac Leviton, born in 1860, died in 1900, just did so many drawings and paintings, and you'll probably get a little overwhelmed looking at all of his work because there's just so much of it. With that being said, I had a hard time once again trying to whittle it down to about six pieces that we can get through together in this Masterclass. Now, let's start to analyze these images together and let's see what we can learn from his techniques. Definitely what he does is he repeats the same techniques over and over and over again, and that's because most artists love familiarity. Once we find a technique that works for us, we tend to stick with it, and you're going to see in the progression of this Masterclass how I keep repeating the same terms over and over and over again. What I like to do for you is switch up the term. If you remember in the painting Masterclass of Isaac Leviton here on DrawingTutorialsOnline.com, we talked about the lead-in, the lead-in, the perspective line that brought us to the center of the piece. Today let's use a different word. Let's use the word journey because what he does in these landscapes is he brings us on a little mini journey. Now all of these images that you're going to see today, I consider them sketches and not necessarily final drawings. Keep in mind he was more of an impressionistic painter at part, during part of his career, so these sketches are very impressionistic as well, which I think is great because it ties in nicely with his final paintings. Let's get started here. So first piece, this is titled Village Winter, 1888. The first thing he does is, let me get a brush, brush helps, the first thing he does is he brings us on a journey. I follow the footsteps up to the person walking in the snow. I follow along the angle of the roof of that little cabin. That brings me to this extremely contrasting tree in the foreground. The reason why I go to the tree is because it's very contrasty. All of those black crows or these shapes that have hard edges, they're super dark, plus the tree is extremely tall. After I look at this tree, of course I'm going to flow to the next tallest thing in that very empty sky, all the way down to this cabin because why? There is contrast there once again. And then I follow through what is called an opening, all the way to the setting sun over on the horizon. I love this piece a lot and what you want to try to do is when you work on a landscape or an interior or any drawing, try to bring the viewer on a little mini journey and tell that story. The next big thing here, quite frankly, we've kind of already gone over it, and that's the contrast. Not a lot of contrast in the footprints in the snow, but our first contrast is here with that person. Second contrast is that edge on the roof. I would call this a hard edge. Third contrast would be the black crows in the tree. Fourth contrast would be... Let me just correct. Let me start over actually. I want to just backtrack here. Let me go to my history. I want to have this make a little bit more sense for you when you download that PDF. Yeah, spelling things properly helps. So contrast, okay? Contrast with the person in the snow, contrast with the roof line, contrast with the tree. The contrast is such an important thing, but not only is it contrast, but it's contrast with edges, hard edges. There are very much hard edges here in the tree with the black crows, and these edges combined with the contrast are what enable Leviton to control our eye as we go through that journey through the piece. This tree over here, once again, has a hard edge. It has the contrast, and these are very, very important things because they are juxtaposed against soft edges. Every one of your drawings and paintings should have both hard edges and contrast along with soft edges. Now, where do we see soft edges? We see the soft edges over here in the background. Very soft edge, and what else? Less contrast on that tree line in the background. This is key. When I look at the images in the critique gallery, one of the things that I talk about a lot with the members when I critique their images are edges, edge control, just understanding why we have hard edges and why we have soft edges. In this particular case, it's to create a foreground and a background, but it's also to control where the viewer looks for second and third. That is very, very important that you can control your edges. Now, another great little technique that he's using in this piece, and this, again, should apply to every type of piece, whether it's a landscape, interior drawing, figure drawing. Things in the foreground should be bigger. This is our foreground tree, kind of. I'm going to call that foreground. I'm going to call this tree our midground, and I'm going to call this tree line our background. This tree is extremely tall, and we look at that first, and another reason for doing this is that it's tall, kind of less tall, even shorter. What it does is it helps to incorporate a little bit of perspective into the mix. Those trees kind of bring us back down to the horizon line, and this is just very commonsensical that in the background, the trees are going to be less tall. It's just the laws of nature. When things go into the background further and further, miles and miles away, they get smaller. This is just really going to help your landscape drawings have so much depth and so much distance, your drawings are going to go back for miles. I really think it's very important to incorporate big versus small, tall versus short, soft versus hard edges. Now, last but not least, a very repetitive thing that I like to talk about so much is Leviton is just a master at utilizing shape. This is one big shape. He has another big shape over here. Try your very best to use these big shapes. Big shapes give your drawings and paintings power. Shapes are imperative. Now, I would say that this piece definitely has three values. It has a light, it definitely has a dark, and it has a mid-tone. I would say that the dark is primarily in contrasting areas where he wants the viewer to look first. We really look at these footprints once again. We look at the contrast here on the dark cabin, and then we flow up to the dark branch on that tree. But there's just these big shapes. Use big shapes and use the three-value system. This will make your images strong. If we just take a step back for a moment, things are different values in this piece. The snow, the ground is a thing. It's primarily light. The sky is another thing. It's a different value. It's a light middle tone. The trees are another thing in the image. They are primarily dark. That's something for you to really utilize because that just creates a powerful image. I love this piece tremendously, and I wanted to start with it because it's just so cool. Now, he has a couple other ones here that are similar. Let's talk to these because they are quite similar, and it really brings us to understanding how Leviton uses these repeating techniques. Now, maybe you have to go with me on this. Maybe you see things a little bit different. That's okay because I see things one way doesn't mean that you're going to see them my way, but let's just pretend that for now you see things the way that I see things. This is where I see this contrast over here in the foreground, this little area. Believe it or not, this little area is my lead-in, and it brings us to the tree, and the tree really has the most contrast. Now, let's take a step back because I want to get this on the correct layer. Lead-in, but today we're calling it a journey. I look here first, contrast, that kind of brings me up to the next contrast, which is this tree, and what else? What other commonalities do we see from the previous image, Winter Village? We have the tall tree here. Now, once again, repetitive technique, we have the tall tree. Tall and what? Contrasty.