Sketching offers us unlimited potential to experience and capture life in a multitude of guises. If sometimes our inner creativity feels blocked, we simply need to pick up our sketching pad and pencils and immerse ourselves in the natural world around us.

 

Sketching is a relatively easy skill to learn providing, we take the time to practice regularly, and it provides us with a wonderful way of making a personal visual record of our surroundings.

 

There are so many interesting and beautiful scenes to record that we cannot fail to become inspired, and if we take a walk, we will find ourselves spoiled for choice. Main points to consider are:

 

1. Take a walk to a local park or river area. Even before you start commencing, take a few moments to absorb the atmosphere of the area. To be able to translate the mood of your surroundings, it is important you feel a part of the scene. Use your senses to help you really be aware of what is around you.

 

2. Notice any trees around you. See if the bark on the trunk is gnarled or smooth, imagine the textures. Notice the different shaped leaves and the pattern of the branches as they reach up to the sky.

 

3. Listen to the tranquil sounds of the river. Watch how the water flows. Is the current slow and lazy or fast paced and white tipped over boulders? Notice any reeds or plants along the river edge, are they moving in the breeze or very still?

 

4. Observe the colours surrounding us. The green foliage against a backdrop of blue sky in summer, or the reds and browns of autumnal days. The glorious colours of flowers in the sunlight or the shimmering purple foliage of specific shrubs.  Every season brings a multitude of beauty for our sketching.

 

5. Watch the birds as they fly just around you. Birds make wonderful sketching opportunities, and because they are rarely still for long, they speed up your sketching accuracy. Take some bird food with you and scatter it nearby, if you are patient and still, the birds will happily come to you.