Landscape drawings in my sketchbook

I've been working outdoors drawing the Cyprus landscape http://indigoblah.blogspot.com

Painting outdoors in the garden

Fruit Trees

Oil on canvas

I've been dodging rain for a few days and finally completed this painting outdoors in the bottom garden.  It features citrus trees, grapevine and bougainvillea, which have interesting contrasts of foliage.

By the way, I've recently started posting work-in-progress images on Twitter.  If you're interested to see go to http://twitter.com/bsart .... or look at my Tweets list in the right-hand margin.

I've been trying out my new light-weight plein air easel set-up.  So far so good.  Off to the mountains for my next project.

Plein air drawing #187

Today I waited until there was a big fat shadow under the palm tree before making this drawing in the bottom garden.  The grapevine growing up the wall, grapefruit trees and bougainvillea made an interesting grouping.  For the first time for months it was fairly comfortable to work outdoors.  Even so I wore my straw stetson;  it's very disreputable and full of gaping holes ... but hey, it works!

Plein air drawing #186

Today I'm drawing looking down onto part of the bottom garden from the terrace.  The viewpoint shows up some nice patterns as the darkly peppled paths work with the trees.

Plein air drawing ~185

This is the first of a series of garden drawings that I'll make in my sketchbook in preparation for a painting.  I have no idea of the view I'll ultimately choose.  It's such a pleasure to just draw and see what happens.  It's still quite hot here;  38C degrees today.  So I waited until around 4.30pm by which time the sun had moved and there was some welcome shade under the big pine tree.

Plein air drawing #184

Down the Valley to the Sea

Fortunately the temperature here in Cyprus has come down a little this week, so that I can work more easily outdoors (en plein air).  This view, looking down the valley onto the sea, was made in my A4 sketchbook.  I first tinted the paper with a wash of black acrylic paint to provide a nice mid-tone, on which to work charcoal and white conte crayon.