I can’t believe it has been almost a month since I attended Kristin Link’s Field Sketching Class, but that is just how summer flies. Last summer, I wrote about participating in Kristin’s Mountain Arts for Youth program at the Wrangell Mountains Center.

During that afternoon class, the kids (and curious adults like me) learned some of Kristin’s basic techniques for drawing and using water colors.

After my semi-successful attempt at drawing Yarrow, I knew I really could benefit from a longer class with Kristin Link.

The class this June was small which meant we had plenty of room to spread out and we got lots of attention from Kristin.

We started the first full day by learning about observational drawing–I think of this as Looking Closely. My two favorite exercises were drawing my hand. Here is my first attempt.

And then my second. Here we were to sketch lightly which is hard for me to do.

And finally my third. It truly is amazing how quickly I improved.

I also enjoyed blind drawing. Here you look at what you are drawing but not at the page. Here are my portraits of Lona using this method.

Kristin introduced the tools we would be using. Water color brushes with water in them. I love these. Scrap pieces of water color paper to test our colors. Water Color paints and ink. There were other tools too, but I stuck to the basics.

We searched nearby to find leaves that interested us and made our first attempt at sketching, painting, and overlaying ink on top.

From there we ventured out into the field. What a field eh?

Here we are sketching.

At first I just wanted to draw rocks.

I was really looking forward to mixing all those browns and grays. This was very much in my comfort zone. I draw these rocks all the time with thread.

But Kristin convinced me to try something a bit more adventuresome. I picked Dryas. It is a favorite plant around here. Dryas is what is known as a succession plant. As the glacier recedes, Dryas shows up on the scene to provide nutrients to the soil and get other things growing.

Here is the work I did in the field. I know now that I was taking on too much. I needed to focus on getting the basics down, instead of trying to great weird figure ground relationships.

This part wasn’t too bad.

Back at the Wrangell Mountain Center, we continued our work. The goal was to create a page for a field sketching journal. I kept wondering why my colors were not blending well, Kristin pointed out that I was not using water color paper! URGH. I won’t make that mistake again.

The next day, Kristin demonstrated some very useful techniques for drawing animals. I was surprised at the results.

From there we went up to Kennicott to learn more about drawing landscapes. Both the lessons–drawing animals and landscapes–were useful, but I decided to stick with the plants for now. I needed to get my page of the field sketching journal done. I am glad I did. Here is the finished journal. Isn’t it a beauty?

Here is my Prickly Rose in color. As you can tell, I like patchworking the color.

Last weekend, I returned to my unfinished work. The problem with sketching live plants and leaves is that after several weeks they die.

My Dryas aka Baby Einstein went ahead and bloomed on me.

Still I did manage to finish my dryas. I feel that my paint mixing was not as good as it had been during the workshop. I’m not sure why. It is much heavier than I would like.

And here are a couple of field sketches that I have yet to paint.

This was an amazing experience. Kristin is an amazing teacher. I hope you will all take a minute to really take a look at the work she does.  It was a great art stretch.

17 Jul This entry was published on July 17, 2014 at 3:54 PM. It’s filed under Just Plain Stories and tagged Field Sketching, Kristin Link. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.