Winter night scenery with mountain river
City Scene Night Bridge – Bonus Tutorial For February 2023
This month’s SBSP Members Exclusive tutorial is a city night scene with bridge. This tutorial includes an optional traceable template for the bridge. Tracie will be showing you step by step, line by line how to do the bridge in this painting!
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You’ll be learning how to do the rich purple night sky with the city skyline. We will also be learning about adding different types of reflection and water texture in the water area. And those sparkling lights! There is so much energy in this painting!
Optional Traceable Included!
No drawing skills required! Tracie does demonstrate how to draw the bridge with chalk in the video, however, you are welcome to use the bridge template to help with that part!
Directions At A Glance:
There is a 53 minute instructional video, optional traceables sized for different canvas sizes, picture of the painting and printable PDF instructions with written steps and pictures.
What is Scenery Drawing?
Scenery drawing is a drawing that shows a scenic view. It can be a stand-alone drawing or a drawing that is a combination of landmarks, nature, and perspective.
The subject of a scenery drawing can be any of the following:
- Landscape
- City skyline
- Sunset backgound
- Seaside
- Mountains
- Lakes
- Rivers
- Monuments
- Parks
- Meadows
- Hills
- Forests
- Valleys
- Countryside
Landscape drawings and paintings will always have scenic views.
In fact, the word landscape comes from the Dutch language. The dutch word for landscape is “landschap” which means the area of land that a person can look at all at the same time, a picture showing a view of the countryside or the general appearance of a landscape.
2 Most Common Types of Scenery Drawings
You will most likely decide on one of two types of scenery drawings to make. Depending on your artistic preference, you will choose between the following two art themes:
To draw effective scenery drawings you should incorporate the following three elements.
- Nature or Landmarks
- Light and shadows
- Perspective
The better you are at mastering these three elements, the better your scenery drawing will be.
Should I Draw From Imagination or From Reference?
The answer to this question is not cut and dry. When we were little kids, we all started by drawing from imagination. Then we advanced to tracing pictures from our favorite story books and drawing cartoon characters. Eventually, as we advanced, we tried using reference images.
To improve your artistic skills, when you don’t have much experience with the subject, it’s better to draw from a reference image. This way, you can easily see the perspective of the scenery.
By looking at the landmarks in comparison to the other items in the reference photo, you can get a better idea of where to position each item.
When you only rely on your imagination, the perspective is more likely to be off. Your imagination will lead you to believe that certain lines should be straight and symmetrical when this is not the case in nature.
This may work for an abstract scenery drawing but less so for a realistic scenery drawing.
Nature has irregular lines and curves. So a realistic nature drawing should reflect this.
If you choose to make a realistic scenery drawing, you’re better off using a reference picture to capture these natural lines and curves.
In the end, no one option is better than the other. Using a combination of both drawing from imagination and drawing from reference is necessary.
