I recently took part in Ohn Mar Win’s Patreon hangout. She puts up photos and everyone draws and paints. Really kind of fun and something I want to challenge myself to do more of in the new year. But I need to find balance*.

Anyway, it made me realize that my landscapes are stiff and don’t feel as good as those i made years ago. I don’t know that I’ve shared here that in the early 2000s when I lived in VERY rural Maine I used to drive around Washington County and draw and paint local landmarks and scenic images. I’d then load them up to eBay starting at 1 cent or 10 cents. eBay had some sort of promo if you started your listing for 1 cent it was cheaper. I did a LOT OF that. I have very few images left over from that time period because I sold most of them for a few bucks. You might think that’s a shame but I literally paid my rent that summer** by selling landscape drawing and paintings of West Quoddy Head and Roques Bluff State Park to people all over the world.

Honestly, as an artist paying rent by selling art is a good feeling. Also, if I’m totally honest I lived in a tiny apartment and I needed to get it gone.

Anyway. I dove into something that simplifies everything- value studies with ink wash.

Back to basics.

I used my 2 ink wash brushes with 2 values of india ink, a pencil, and my sailor fude pen. Simple. Easy.

I built up layers of tonal value through adding in layers of ink wash. Part of me wants to make a 3rd brush with a near black shade. But this will do.

So stiff.

I’m going to work on being looser in my landscape images. I’m also going to take more photos of landscapes. I took plenty but my bike is a feature in all of them.

*And Ko-Fi doesn’t allow for videos. She used Zoom. I might need to look closer into Zoom.

** To be fair my rent was roughly $300 a month. I lived in the apartment over my grandmother’s farm house and the deal was that I would pay the electric bill for the farm. No one told me how high the electric bill could be. When they used the welders the bill would SKYROCKET. $350 was the peak.