Part 5 ➤ Out and About with Your Sketchbook 230 Roads, Fences, Gates, and Walls Roads, walls, and fences are parts of the landscape that can add direction, interest, and vitality to a scene or view. A road, wall, or fence meandering away within a grouping of winding hills can add drama and narrative to a drawing. A half-open gate can make viewers wish they knew what lay beyond it and stimulate the imagination. 231 Chapter 18 ➤ Made by Man: Out in the Landscape In the Farmyard You have only to go outside on a farm and you will find something to draw—and sometimes, you don’t even have to go outside. Whether you are on a big farm in the Midwest with lots of equip- ment and big fenced fields, or a little family farm in New England with a big garden, a few chickens, cows, and an ancient old tractor, you will find something interesting to draw. Haystacks worked for Monet, and as you travel around the country- side you will see the various shapes and sizes in different areas of the country. Big barns are the norm in Vermont, for example, while the bigger structures in Nebraska are the silos for harvested corn. Corrals and farmyards enclose areas and make interesting angles and shapes. The animals themselves we will deal with in Chapter 20, “It’s a Jungle Out There—So Draw It!” They deserve a chapter of their own, after all. Try Your Hand Using your viewfinder frame to help compose the mainland masses in a landscape, take certain human-made elements, such as roads, fences, and walls, to make the difference between an ordinary drawing and an extraordinary one. Lauren’s grandfather drew some of these roads. Note how each is an individual. Part 5 ➤ Out and About with Your Sketchbook 232 Sheds and barns are technically structures and so are covered in Chapter 19, “Houses and Other Structures,” but you’ll want to be sure to include them with all that you find when drawing on a farm. You can sneak a peek ahead if you’d like some helpful hints for how to draw them. Special Uses, Special Structures And then there are all the unusual erections in the landscape, from mountaintop warming huts to lighthouses on rocky shores, just waiting to challenge you and enliven your drawings. If you are out and about and feel like creating an unusual drawing, try one of the more striking structures that decorate the landscape. Lighthouses, windmills, and tow- ers add height, but they can also be the focus of an interesting drawing. For you outdoorsy types, there are huts, sheds, cabins, fishing shacks, lean-tos, tents, and campers—as well as log footbridges, trail cairns, and forest service and Bureau of Land Management signs. Artist’s Sketchbook Cairns are human-made trail markings, most often piles of rocks that mark the trailside path. Adding these mini-structures to your drawing can lead the viewer onto the trail, too. Some of the more un- usual items in the land- scape may be waiting around the corner for you to draw, such as this lighthouse. A little closer to home, you could draw in your yard and try a tree house, screen house, gazebo, or even your hammock hanging between two trees. Or, for the city dweller: fire hydrants, parking meters, parking lot shanties, garbage cans, even traffic signals. On the Dock of the Bay and Beyond Whether near the water, on the water, or in the water, you will usually find human-made things along with the natural. From canoes on a quiet lake in the Adirondacks to trawlers at the commercial dock in Montauk to sailboats in the Caribbean to the ocean liner you are on in the middle of the Atlantic, boats are there for you to include in your drawings to add to the sense of adventure. Docks, Harbors, and Shipyards Docks and shipyards are challenging places to draw. A dock needs to be drawn carefully, and there is a lot to measure. Once you get the main plane of the dock drawn in space, use crossing diagonals to divide the space equally and then again and again for the piers or pilings. Try Your Hand If you can get your car close to a dock, try drawing it on your car window (a moving plastic picture plane). You can see the progres- sion of the piers and the per- spective of the walkway leading out into the water. Do it for fun and make a tracing if you like it. 233 Chapter 18 ➤ Made by Man: Out in the Landscape The activity in a boatyard can be daunting, but if you enjoy the subject, you will find a way to frame an amount of the activity that you can handle. Your viewfinder frame will come in handy for this. Plus, don’t hesitate to filter out unwanted objects and detail. This is called “artistic liberty.” The Art of Drawing A boat can add just the right touch to a landscape. You might try sketching a fishing trawler overflowing with fish, just back from a day at sea, or a canoe tucked against the shore, waves lapping at its side. As an experiment, leave the humans out of the picture (also because we won’t be discussing how to draw them until Chapters 21 and 22); you’ll find that human-made things without the men can make your drawing come alive in surprising ways. You don’t have to be Marlon Brando to create a dramatic waterfront effect. Part 5 ➤ Out and About with Your Sketchbook 234 From a Canoe to the QE2 The proportion, shape, curves, and form of boats is a little different from most other things. The hulls of boats have more complicated curves that need a bit of special seeing and draw- ing to get them right. Sitting on the dock of the bay. Be sure to take your time so that your boats stay in the water. 235 Chapter 18 ➤ Made by Man: Out in the Landscape The World of Vehicles They may or may not be your favorite things, but our landscape is crisscrossed from end to end with roads, train tracks, the bridges over them, underpasses under them, and tunnels to get to the other side. A little wood bridge over a walkway might be more to your liking, or you may enjoy the challenge of a suspension bridge or a mountain pass with a tunnel going off somewhere. Try what- ever appeals to you, with or without vehicles. Bridges, Trains, and Tracks Tunnels and covered bridges and overpasses are everywhere, in the city and the country. They can be the classic Vermont covered bridge, a tunnel through the mountains in Colorado, or the Golden Gate Bridge—the choice is yours. Back to the Drawing Board Boats need to lie flat in the water. There is nothing more awkward than a boat that won’t stay in the water where it belongs. Try drawing a box in space for the boat and then put the boat in the box. You may want to refer back to Chapter 13, “This Is a Review—There Will Be a Test,” where we discussed drawing a box around a more difficult ob- ject to help you draw it. Part 5 ➤ Out and About with Your Sketchbook 236 Moving Vehicles Then there are the moving human-made elements like trucks, cars, fire engines, buggies, wagons, tractors, and merry-go-rounds. You can think of even more, we are sure. Take a look at some of these vehicles that Lauren has drawn. Vehicles provide a contrast between hard angles and geometric shapes in the manmade world, and the often more fluid forms and contours of nature. Place a person or two in the landscape and you’ve included the link between both worlds! Every mountain is as in- dividual as any land- scape feature. Combines, boats, planes, automobiles— more than just modes of transportation. 237 Chapter 18 ➤ Made by Man: Out in the Landscape Your World Is What You Make It By now, you can see that everything in the world is fair game for your pencil and sketch- book. Go on—get out there in the world. It’s just waiting for you to draw. Part 5 ➤ Out and About with Your Sketchbook Your Sketchbook Page Try your hand at practicing the exercises you’ve learned in this chapter. Chapter 18 ➤ Made by Man: Out in the Landscape 239 The Least You Need to Know ➤ Untouched landscape is hard to find, so make peace with elements of human design. ➤ Human-made elements can add order and interest and welcome diagonals to lead the eye into the composition. ➤ Drawing boats in the water, or any vehicles, requires some special consideration and careful seeing of the proportion and detail. ➤ Your world is what you make it, so go draw it the way you would like it to be. . your drawings to add to the sense of adventure. Docks, Harbors, and Shipyards Docks and shipyards are challenging places to draw. A dock needs to be drawn carefully, and there is a lot to measure. Once. Adirondacks to trawlers at the commercial dock in Montauk to sailboats in the Caribbean to the ocean liner you are on in the middle of the Atlantic, boats are there for you to include in your drawings to. Need to Know ➤ Untouched landscape is hard to find, so make peace with elements of human design. ➤ Human-made elements can add order and interest and welcome diagonals to lead the eye into the