As promised here is the first of I what I predict to be six posts showing my sketches from Switzerland. Just to warn you these sketches are not in chronological because the only colour version was the first drawing I completed, so I have decided to hold back on that one and show you the above sketch looking across
Verbier South-West towards
Grand Combin.
This pencil sketch was quite a challenge for a novice plein air artist like me as the peaks of Grand Combin kept disappearing behind white cloud so it was hard to get my bearings on the page. I worked with an HB lead throughout and tried to get all the basic outlines down before suggesting the light skimming off the rock faces and being swallowed by the forests lower down the mountainside. If your eyesight is good hopefully you can see the quick outline of the apartment block Suzanne and I stayed in. It's in the bottom left to the right of a badly drawn crane (the lifting type).
Back in that apartment I grabbed a 3B pencil and blocked in the foreground forest to provide a bit of depth and contrast to the composition.
The sketchbook I used on our trip was a 14x14cm cartridge paper book. The pencil was a Venus HB, one of few left from my Grandfather's box of pencils that he used at work in the 1950s.
