landscape photography – Daily Fiber

Sunday Sketch Colored Pencil

Posted on January 12, 2025January 12, 2025 by Laura Kate

For today’s sketch, I wanted to try to draw a photograph of a sunset that Bill took during our trip to Italy several years ago.

This is the view from Medieval Assisi, which sits on a hill well above the surrounding landscape. He had shared it with me during our joint “100 Day Project,” back in 2023. I had never quite finished making 100 pieces of art out of Bill’s photos. This one I had wanted to turn into an art quilt. I had even done a fabric pull in anticipation.

It seems like an impossible task when I think about it now. But the first step is always to get a good drawing, from which to make a pattern. For this drawing I used graphite and colored pencils.

There’s no way for pencil to get the lustrous glow of a sunset the way a photograph can. But I did manage to render the shapes reasonably well.

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Sunday Sketching – On the Pond

Posted on August 13, 2023August 10, 2023 by Laura Kate

By now I have looked through all of my photos from the July trip and selected some for use in my art. Today I want to study this image of my husband and brother in a rowboat on the pond at brother’s property.

The picture as is tells the story of enjoying an early morning on the pond in July. I wanted to simplify the scene, focusing on the men, the boat and the pond. Using the photo editor, I re-framed it, increased the light and applied a filter, to reveal this.

I like this low-value image a lot and can visualize how I would paint it. But first I wanted to look more closely at the values, and also practice sketching the subject. So I took out all the color and zoomed in on the boat.

Now it’s perfect for sketching in graphite.

This was a fun and easy sketch. I’m inspired to move on to watercolors.

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Resurfacing

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Laura Kate

It’s been a long and eventful two weeks. No arts or crafts were done in the interval. I think I’ll just post some photos of our trip to Alaska.

The Westerdam

Seattle in our wake.

View from veranda

Mendenhall Park from the visitor’s center

https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/tongass/about-forest/offices/?cid=stelprdb5400800

Hubbard glacier

https://www.nps.gov/wrst/planyourvisit/yakutat-and-coast.htm

Beautiful Sitka

More mountains surrounding Sitka. We are on a whale-watching excursion.

Potlatch Park in Ketchikan.

https://www.experienceketchikan.com/native-american-totem-poles-1.html

After returning to Seattle, we rented a car and drove to Olympia. The following day we hiked in Millersylvania State Park, Tumwater, WA

https://www.parks.wa.gov/546/Millersylvania

This trip gave us so many experiences and created beautiful memories. It was well worth waiting three full years to finally go.

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Happy Earth Day to All

Posted on April 22, 2021 by Laura Kate

To celebrate this day, I’m re-posting some of my favorite photographs that feature beautiful works of Mother Nature.

WE ARE BLESSED BEYOND ALL TELLING WITH THE BOUNTIES OF THE EARTH.

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Inspiration from the Little Free Library

Posted on December 10, 2019 by Laura Kate

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How many of you are familiar with this movement? I first became aware of it almost ten years ago. It’s a way to encourage reading while recycling books that you have finished reading. Anyone can erect a little library on their property by becoming a steward, building the library and registering it at the organization’s site. There are little free libraries all over the place. Check out the organization’s website, which has a map showing the locations of these tiny structures.

https://littlefreelibrary.org/

On a recent walk through my neighborhood I discovered that a neighbor had installed a little free library in her yard. What a surprise and delight! Inside I found a beautiful book of photographs that looked very promising as a source of inspiration.

http://maxwellmackenzie.com/americanruins.php

Maxwell MacKenzie is an American photographer born in Fergus Falls, MN. who specializes in architectural photography. This book includes some wonderful images of abandoned structures on the Northern Great Plains which he captured between 1996 and 1999. They were built by settlers, farmers and pioneers who abandoned them, generally due to experiencing some kind of hardship. I found the images to be haunting. I began to imagine the people of the past who had lived and died there. And so I began sketching from the photographs, with an idea about recreating some of these ghosts. Here is my first sketch, of an old one-room schoolhouse. It is almost finished.

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