Left the city behind and the nice boxy shapes of urban sketching land for something a little more organic. And, hard! Definitely a learning experience.

April 2024 in Sumur Tiga, Pulau Weh. (Still) Getting Started.

OK. There are a lot of things wrong with this. A lot. It is not good. There is no depth. The hues are OK-ish, but the values are not. Too samy and not deep enough, or kind of clumsy too dark like in the palm frond stems. The main problem however, is the composition. Should know better from photos. Just looking out the damn balcony from the bungalow and then trying to sketch what is in front of you is a bad choice. But, I just wanted to get to it!

So, next day a tighter view of the garden below centered on one palm with a tree in the background and some flowers for contrast. I elided a few things. It is a damned jungle! Much happier with this. Color values are better. The “leaf effect” in the tree works OK for me. The flowers were much brighter than that and trying to have a white highlight in there is just way beyond me. Kind or lost control with the trunk of the palm tree. That is a mess.

And, then remove even more. Just down to one palm tree. There was actually another palm in front which just partially obscured some of the fruits on this one. So, I mentally filled it in by looking at the fruits on another palm. Things I am most happy with here are the small fruits, color contrast, and the trunk of the palm including some of the watercolor mixing on its own in that unpredictable way. Learn to stop! The awkward extra dark on the two frond stems was a late, and unfortunate, addition.

So, scene selection/composition, work on values, and simplify the elements in the scene.