Likely landscapes

I've been out and about over the last few weeks, here's some recent sketches through train windows.

Often, I've been in carriages either too crowded to easily manoeuvre myself to draw other passengers, or mostly empty with nothing to draw other than the landscape rushing past. So here’s some glances of the East English countryside.

You might be wondering how I can sketch anything when the train is flashing past so quickly, but countryside landscapes can be quite repetitive when seen from rail tracks.

So I'm with pen or pencil poised over a blank sheet, something catches my eye - a particular tree, or a building, or other detail - I stare at it to grab as much information as possible before it disappears, and quickly make some marks. It’s gone, instantly, but the landscape evolves slowly - I look again, fix on another detail, similar trees, matching fields, hedge lines etc. The process is repeated, I look for elements that correlate with the previous view-grab, a bit more is drawn, the sketch takes form.

So these end sketches are a patchwork of glances, a collage of various eye-snapshots over several minutes. Summaries of passing points, adding up to a whole.

It's fun, it trains you to extract the most from the shifting landscape, and it passes the time!