Expansive scenes can be tricky, but asking ‘what caught your eye?’ will cut it down to size.

Ok, I know I am posting my Tuesday Tip on Monday, but it just makes sense for today.

Expansive landscape scenery captures our attention, grabbing our sketching stuff we jump in to capture it all, only to end up frustrated with a flat, uninteresting sketch. It has happened to me so often, so what do you do?

We were in Key Largo last week and stopped at Little Crawl Key – I have no idea how it got that name but this view was inspiring. This photo does not do it justice as to how expansive it was.

Capturing the moment we often try to capture it all which misses what it was that captured our attention in the first place. With this scene I could have ended up with a lot of water and sky, and the important parts lost in the background greenery in the process. So I asked, “what caught my eye?” It was the palms and the building on the small island. So I focused on that, with the intent of giving the background less emphasis.

Then I added the background without ink to make it less defined. I added intense color to the palms and building, which made them pop out nicely.

Too often we, including me, just jump in without asking why am I sketching this, or what caught my eye. Let me know how you have experienced this in your sketches and photos.

Next week’s tip will be the second reason we end up with flat sketches, and a tip to help.