Author Archive | Ellen Lindner

After coming up with a design, Elizabeth likes to audition a wide variety of value options.  To do this, she had us stack paper in 3 values and then use a utility/craft knife to cut the design through all three.  Finally, you glue them together in various combinations.

Here’s my dark-on-light version.

I also made a light-on-dark version.  But, I still had brown cutouts and a bunch of unused black and white pieces.

As I was about to address those Elizabeth stopped by and said something brilliant.  “These little skinny lines are the most intersecting of all.”  She was looking at the little gaps showing in my stack of cut shapes, above.  And she was right!  That immediately sent me in the direction of adding little skinny lines.  I was excited!

This was my next iteration.  MUCH more interesting, right?  The little skinny white lines are intentional gaps between the shapes.  The black lines are drawn in to highlight the overlapping shadowy spots.

I was very happy with this!  Still, it was time to crop and to look for even more interesting compositions.  I did this on a black/grey/white copied version.

I found several interesting options, but I liked this next one the best.

 So, what did I do?  I, once again, cut 3 different value shapes from this design and glued up 3 different versions.

But wait, there’s more!  The day wasn’t over, yet.  So, instead of reaching for fabric I went back to some of my earlier sketching ideas.  Elizabeth had suggested something that sounded like great fun: randomly throwing a scattering of berries/squares onto paper and them connecting them.

A nice splattering of “dots.”

I couldn’t really connect them easily because they kept wanting to lift off.  Instead, I thought I’d draw around each one, then remove it.  Then later connect the draw shapes.

What a disappointing hodge-podge.  Maybe some cropping would help.

Well, it did help, but I think it will be a LONG time before I feel like revisiting this idea.  And when I do, will the shapes become round berries or stay as small squares???

What a FULL day of sketching!  I won’t run out of ideas any time soon.

Ellen Lindner

This past week I went to a wonderful 3-day workshop with Elizabeth Barton.  I’ve long admired her ability to simplify a design and to then interpret it in dramatic, high-contrast, colors.

Our class supply list included several inspiration photos.  I was familiar enough with Elizabeth’s work to know that a landscape image would work well.  But, that’s just not what was speaking to me.  I perused by Pinterest boards for things that seemed intriguing.  Ignoring subjects, I just looked for things that were appealing.  These are the images I came up with.  (I don’t have permission to use the images, so I’m just describing them.  However, if you go to my Pinterest board “Nature Photography” you’ll see them.)

A twig with red leaves stretching over a sparkling stream,

A twig with lots of berries, with everything encased in ice,

A twig with tiny droplets of water,

Terraced and flooded rice fields.  The fields connect with undulating walls of vegetation.

All of these had a sort of “rivulet” quality to them: twigs branching off, or the walls of rice patties creating a similar pattern.  This is what I wanted to focus on.

Elizabeth showed us a variety of ways to create sketches.  These included tracing, simplifying, collaging with paper, or combinations of these techniques.  Her goal was for us to spend and ENTIRE day creating sketches!  That sounded rather lengthy at first, but I quickly got into it and was thrilled with all the variations I created.  Elizabeth wanted us to have 12 sketches by the end of the day and I’m sure I exceeded that.

First, I traced the image that most intrigued me, the iced berries.  (Tracing automatically simplifies a design, since you can’t see all the details.)  My sketch surprised me by being very boring.

It wasn’t too hard to figure out why.  Elizabeth stressed the importance of value contrast and this one just didn’t have enough of that.

But, what if I cropped it?  Like me, Elizabeth is big on this and she had us make paper “L shapes”  as cropping tools.  (I do the same in the design classes I teach.)

The cropped versions were better and are, perhaps, worth further consideration.  I think this first one would look good if turned 90 degrees to the right.

And I like this square one even better.

At this point, Elizabeth suggested a new approach for me.  First, she had me copy all 4 inspiration photos in a grey scale.  This way I could focus on values without being distracted by color.  Definitely true.

 Then, she asked me to study the 4 images, put them away, and sketch multiple sketches from my impressions.  First, I focused on the twig idea.

I like that top one pretty well, but the next two don’t excite me.  Again, what if they were turned into a horizontal orientation?

The main image that was stuck in my head was that of the terraced rice patties.  So, I began to play with that.  First, a busy sketch that’s most similar to the inspiration photo.

Then, a simplified version.

I liked that pretty well and decided to move forward with it. Next, she asked us to create our sketches in 3 different value combinations, using cut paper.  That yielded some surprising results, which I’ll show you in the next post.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. See a related post about sketching barns.