
Another quick sketch from Swansea Bay yesterday with conté crayons into my A4 brown paper sketchbook. I concentrated on capturing a sense of the atmosphere, rather than
fine detail. I limit myself to three colours, white, sanguine and black, so different tones have to be achieved by varying the pressure on the conté sticks and overlaying one colour with strokes of another. The brown coloured paper gives me a ready-made mid-tone to work over, which makes life a bit easier. A lot easier really, as I don’t have to face the tyranny of a pristine white sheet.
I have put my series of drawings en plein air of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page. This one is the legendary grave of Saint Elfys (Elvis) in Pembrokeshire, not for from the Presceli Mountains. Elfys? Presceli? Elvis Presley? Coincidence? hhhmmmm

I love this and remember the scene well from my childhood though no wind turbines then.
There are a handful dotted along the shore but they rarely seem to move.
Quite an atmospheric effect!
It’s that sort of place 😀
Evocative. Like your palette.
Thanks Judith 😀
Your technique on this one reminds me of when I first started a drawing class with a new teacher. He had us using only the white paper (not so lucky as you!) for the white in the drawing, plus a medium gray and black. We really had to work to decide which category of our three choices each shade of what we were drawing fell into. But the end results were often quite pleasing!
That’s a good idea. I like doing drawing exercises, really sharpens my technique 😊