Landscapes

"Backgrounds" were a major weakness for me when I was younger. They weren't something inherently interesting to me for their own sake, so I never put in the work to get good at them. My main interest was in drawing people. Most of my earlier art was portraits or character designs, so the landscapes didn't matter. But sometimes I wanted to be able to draw people in larger scenes, with backgrounds, and then I felt very restricted by my own limited skillset.

In 2017 I finally managed to start working seriously on solving that problem. That was the year I got my first iPad, a Christmas gift from my parents I couldn't have afforded on my own. Previously I'd been drawing with pencil in small moleskin sketchbooks; they were light and easy to carry around so I could draw on break at work or at coffdee shops after work, but that medium seriously limited what kind of work I could do. The iPad was also small and portable but gave me a much broader range. I set to work drawing scenes from my real life, to build up practice with the layout and perspective.

I was living in Seattle when I first started focusing on landscapes intentionally, but having moved around a lot since, I've found it fun to draw the different places I've visited and lived. It creates a sort of art journal I can look back on to remember these places.