The Five Shape Landscape

Lakeside Tranquility, pastel, 11 x 14

This past week I had my classes focus on simplifying landscape subject matter into about five basic shapes in the thumbnail stage.  We used grey markers in 3-4 values to sketch out the thumbnails. This forces you to make decisions about what value to categorize each section of the painting right from the start.  For my demo above, once I had a value thumbnail (or notan) that I liked, I began my painting referencing my thumbnail, not the photo. I then further divided the shapes and adjusted the values within each shape, referencing the photo at that point as more details were added.  I find this to be a good way to begin a painting that contains lots of busy tree foliage.