Composition: Developing your studies

After researching Tacita Dean's art, the drama and power of her monochrome work really inspired me and I wanted to do something in her style so I decided to do a landscape with dramatic clouds. Some of the photos I took in August in the Lake District had magnificent clouds so I cropped part of one picture and drew it using George Seurat's technique in Tacita Dean's style, with textured A3 cartridge paper as my support and Willow Charcoal and very intense Sennelier black soft pastel as my medium.

I thought this would be a good exercise to practise my tutor’s suggestion of making a chart at the side of my drawing as a reference of lighter, middle and darker tones, but as I kept working on my subject the chart was surrounded by the drawing and is now part of it. I have to say however that a chart was very useful and I use one all the time now – making sure however that I do the chart on separate paper or in my sketchbook.

I really like the result, a powerful drawing in which I think I managed to capture the clouds well and the sense of distance of the mountains and trees in a simple but effective way. I used the texture of the paper to depict the lighter part of the mountains.