Landscapes - Stoke

In my Christmas Holidays, I also visited Stoke (specifically Winterley) and I wasn't expecting it to be so... middle of nowhere like. This would be interesting to draw though, since I haven't really draw much like that before. It was definitely different, but I found myself less inspired than I hoped,

The place I was staying was very nicely decorated for Christmas, and I really liked all the little details and shapes that were involved. This made me want to focus on the lines of everything so that I could show what was there without getting too distracted by colour. I still used it for the lines itself to indicate what everything looked like (and which makes it even more obvious that it was at Christmas). I think that trying more wet media for this could have been nice though, maybe painting it in an almost old fashioned sort of style, since that is what the house reminded me of.

Next, I went into the actual village, which looked like something straight off a Christmas card. Again, I really enjoyed all the little details and Christmas decorations, so I chose to do more lineart, and this time without colours. I think zooming in to the main scene would have been better since the road and perspective doesn't really help much, and doesn't tell you much about the place. Again a painted approach could have been nice, but that is probably again just because it reminds me of old paintings I have seen.

The little events for Christmas were very cute, and made it seem a lot busier than the rest of the things I had seen in Stoke. I wanted to use white lines to emphasise the winter/snowy/Christmas feeling of the scene, but I think choosing an area more more fun and much busier would have worked more, or zooming in to add more details and the rest of the large toy soldier on the right hand side of the image.

There was a large farm shop, with a small barn holding pigs and goats. I really liked all of the wooden beams, and the consistency of shapes within the structure, but that meant that it would be a little harder to draw because everything would have to be drawn very much the same.  I thought it would be nice to get contrast and make the shapes stand out with charcoal, but again I think this would have worked better if I had zoomed out. I didn't realise that I had done only lines again, getting too carried away with the shapes. I think that pencil crayon could have been good for this, especially for the textures of the hay that I found harder to show with a soft medium like charcoal.

We also passed a lot of field as we walked to places, making it feel even more country side. I decided to paint with coffee because it helps reinforce the countryside feel, and I think it also helps to show the cheery weather of the day. I didn't have time to sit down and draw the scene as I was walking past, so this was done from photograph, which gave me more time to sit down and paint this. I think that this is more effective than my other drawings from Stoke because it managed to show the atmosphere of the place a lot more than the line drawings.