Fen Drayton Lakes

Fen Drayton Lakes

Today was a beautifully sunny day and it was perfect to go and explore the lakes around where I left. These are some photos from a 3 hour walk. I took the camera off auto so I had to consider how I was taking the photos, getting the exposure right through the shutter speed and apature. It is really lovely being back so close to nature and out of the city and to somewhere where everything is sooo flat. When my friend came down to visit the tiny village she said she was amazed that she could hear birds!

I wanted to create a full bleed landscape, which considers for-ground, middle-ground and back-ground. I started off with the for-ground of the tree being a continuous line drawing as that is an approach I am not scared to start a drawing with. To bring the broken down tree forward I made the lines bold on the outside but I also really like the effect the continuous lines have made to represent the bark. The squiggles in the background are portraying the bushes/trees in an abstract kind of way and I have created texture with the pebbles and mud in the for-ground through the use of a continuous line filling the space. I also tried capturing the tide with the direction of the faint lines of the water which I didn't want to make too strong as it should portray fluidity and the shine from the sun.

I am beginning to select which parts of the landscape I want to portray in my sketching and which parts to leave out. Here I could actually see parts of bushes and a slop in the for-ground but decided to crop past this and go straight to the water. Also the use of negative space, without illustrated lines, helps portray light on the water and increases the contrast between light and dark I think this is effective in making the composition more fluid and imbalanced.