By Cynthia Hartwig, WNPF Board Member
It’s no secret that Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks serve as inspiration for many artists. From the iconic views of Paradise and vibrant hues of Diablo Lake, to the intricate details of the Hoh rainforest, your creativity will go wild in these wild places!
Sometimes, seeing more of the park doesn’t have to mean stepping up your pace and mileage on the trails. In fact, if you slow down and exercise your eye muscles more than your legs, you can learn to enjoy every trail in brand new ways – even on trails you’ve hiked many times before.
I’ll walk you through six tips to help you get started on drawing nature’s beauty while out on a trail.
People who can draw and, by extension, painters like me, are made not born. I know this because I didn’t draw anything but stick figures until I reached the ripe old age of 63. I used to watch hikers sketching on the trail and while I’d admire their artistic skill, I would hike away, thinking, “Nope, not for me. The Art Fairy didn’t tap me at birth.”
It turns out that Art Fairy doesn’t tap anyone with the unearned gift of artistic talent.
Picasso, Richard Diebenkorn, and Leonardo da Vinci all learned drawing, an observational skill, by practice. The key is to break down what you see into basic shapes. It’s as simple as breaking down a landscape this way: draw a lopsided triangle to form the top of a rock; make a small rectangle for the base of that rock; pencil in a pear shape for a distant lake; make an S-curve or a zigzag for a wandering trail.
Beginner drawers often become enamored of a glorious vista, and then try to draw everything they see from mountains to valleys to plains. The problem with this all-or-nothing approach is that it’s a pretty fast way to get buried by the thousands of details you don’t have the skill to capture. Instead, focus your attention on a few shapes you can capture individually. Aim for a total of four or five shapes and even though the scene in front of you will be simplified, it will be recognizable.
🥾 Looking for a trail to start your drawing adventures? Click on each season to find great trail recommendations: Winter | Spring | Summer | Fall
Try this observation exercise: Set the timer on your phone for five minutes and place yourself in front of a tree that’s interesting to you. Your task is to pay attention to how the top branch of the tree you’re looking at flops over; notice where a giant ponderosa trunk starts branching out halfway up its puzzle-barked trunk; capture the arthritic black knobs on a larch brace or the claw-like shape of an old burned snag. (If you look without drawing for the whole five minutes before the timer goes off, you will automatically be compelled to draw now because paradoxically, we want what we say we can’t have.)
🌲 Speaking of trees, did you know WNPF donors have supported whitebark pine restoration in Mount Rainier and North Cascades National Parks? Check out the story here.
Start your shape collection in any sketchbook by drawing a big box on a blank page. Think of the rectangle as your container for the shapes that interest you. Set a timer for another five minutes and slowly, purposefully, draw the specific shape of your unique tree within the rectangle.
Continuously look more at the tree than your paper as you draw and don’t hurry; there’s no point in rushing the eye that’s leading the hand. The tree you’re observing, and its unique shape, will appear on your page as a specific and distinctive tree that won’t look like any other tree in the forest – and you’ll never see a forest the same way.
When you’re starting, pay no attention to the scale (meaning the size) of your shapes. Don’t worry about where you place shapes on the paper. Use any old pencil or piece of charcoal – I prefer a pen – then draw and redraw the lines to find the right angles until the paper is black with scribbles.
If the shapes you like are related, it means you’re starting to build a scene! A meandering stream, the sag of a snow-laden branch, or a glacier lily peeping up through snow melt will automatically connect because you’re outside in a world of forested landscapes. Maybe a tiny branchlet of a western red cedar tree will fan across your page. Look up and draw the fish-shaped cloud scudding above you. Follow the sharp incline of a trail across an alpine ridge.
Once you have 3 to 5 shapes on a few pages, look at what you have and then decide where you want to place a horizon line. Voila: your small gathering of simple shapes will somehow, magically suggest a landscape. Depending on where you draw that line, it may create a skinny slice of sky. Maybe it’ll divide a mountain from small ferns growing in a meadow. Any three small objects, like a pinecone, a crown of maiden hair fern, or a striped chipmunk with a nut in its cheek could form a still-life.
Once you start collecting shapes, you’ll see them everywhere your eye roves. At its heart, all drawing is shape drawing, even in complicated compositions with hundreds of lines and thousands of marks that come together to create the illusion of the majesty of Mount Rainier, Mount Shuksan, or Mount Olympus in the distance. You’ll shape up as a drawer surprisingly fast as I did. And I hope you get hooked.
Washington’s National Park Fund is the official philanthropic partner to Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks. We raise funds to preserve, enhance, and protect Washington’s national parks by funding scientific research, youth and family experiences, and projects that will keep these parks strong and vital now and forever, for everyone.
Cover photo by Kacee Saturay. All blog photos taken by Cynthia Hartwig.