Sketching a loose plan from a photo
The previous lesson covered where to put things by feel, no rule-of-thirds police at the door. Today that feel goes onto paper in pencil, before any paint touches anything.
This is the step people want to skip, understandably — the appeal is mixing color, not sketching like it is 7th-grade art class. But five minutes of loose pencil lines now prevents a painting that goes sideways at minute twenty, when you are already committed and the water is already down.
Pick your photo first
Go back to whatever reference photo you have been eyeing for this landscape. It does not have to be fancy — something on your phone from a hike, a shot out the car window at the point of the mountain, whatever. If you do not have one you love, any landscape photo with a horizon line, some middle stuff, and something in front will do. We are not judging the photo; we are judging what we do with it.
The rule stands: paint from a photo, not from imagination, especially this early. Your brain lies to you about color and shape — it will insist a mountain is "mountain-colored" and a tree is "green." The photo will not lie, so look at the actual pixels.
The sketch itself: three lines, tops
Grab a regular pencil, something soft, nothing mechanical and scratchy. On your paper, lightly draw:
- The horizon line. Where sky meets land. That is it. One line.
- The big shapes. Mountain silhouette, the shoreline of a lake, the edge of a field — whatever your "far" thing is. Keep it simple; do not chase every bump.
- One or two anchor points up front. A tree, a rock, a fence post — something that tells the eye "this is close." You do not need detail, just a shape and its rough location.
That is the whole sketch: three passes, maybe two minutes of pencil work. If you are drawing more than that, you are overdoing it. This is a map, not a drawing you are going to be graded on.
Press light — really light. You are going to paint over this, and heavy pencil lines show through your washes, especially in light areas like sky, where a phantom gray line under a pale blue wash is annoying and permanent. Use a light hand, or knock the lines back with a kneaded eraser after sketching if they look too dark.
What you are actually deciding
The sketch is not about getting the mountain shape "right." It is about deciding, on paper and before pigment, where your horizon, far stuff, and close stuff go. Once that is down, you are not making those decisions mid-wash with a loaded brush hovering over wet paper — a bad moment to have an existential crisis about composition.
Composition rules are not my strong suit. I do not calculate thirds; I look at the photo, ask "what is the first thing my eye goes to," and make sure that thing has room to breathe on the paper. That is the whole system, and it works for me.
A caution here, actually
If you are using a photo on your phone, prop it up somewhere you will not knock it into your water jar. It sounds dumb until it happens — phone screens and watercolor water do not mix.
Do not skip the ugly test sketch
Do this sketch on scrap paper first if you are nervous, or right on your good sheet if you are feeling brave. Either way, do not erase and re-erase and re-erase trying to get it perfect. A slightly wonky mountain silhouette is fine. You are not drafting blueprints; you are giving your brush a rough trail to follow.
Which points to the actual finish line, or the lack of one. None of my paintings get framed, entered anywhere, sold, or put in a show. My best sky wash from last year is taped to the fridge with a magnet from a pizza place, and that is genuinely the highest honor a painting earns in my house. I mean that. The sketch you are about to do is not leading toward some big reveal. It is leading toward you sitting with your paper and your water and seeing what happens — which is the real point, more than whatever ends up stuck to the fridge.
So do not get precious about the sketch either. If it is wrong, redraw it; if it is still wrong, redraw it again. Paper is cheap. That is more or less the whole philosophy around here.
Before next time
Pick your reference photo and do the three-line sketch at home if you have ten quiet minutes — light pencil, nothing fancy. Bring it next time and we will start laying in that first wash together.