OUAN404 - Environmental Storytelling - Chevin Forest

For the first location, I chose a place that I was unfamiliar with and had never been before, despite wanting to go. After some thought I decided that Chevin forest located in Otley would be the first place I would draw for the environmental storytelling brief. After arriving in the morning via bus, I walked through the entrance and up a hill until I was on a path that I could use to find various spots that I could draw or paint. The weather that day was good for the occasion, it was very cold as this was in December but it was fairly dry and the sky was clear.

After a small walk, I came across a bench that I decided to sit at and produce a couple of the pieces for the brief based on the surroundings there, this location seemed appropriate because it meant I could produce a more detailed painting rather than a sketch, and thus produce work of a more varied quality as it took different amounts of time to produce different pieces. Something I made sure to do whilst I was there was to take photographs that I can look back on, I could also use them as reference photographs if I ever needed photographs of trees or a heavily built up natural environment. Something I really liked about drawing in Chevin forest was the diversity in the different locations around the forest, there was huge amounts of variation in trees, leaves, whilst some areas had rivers running through them and others were quite open; so there were a lot of different places available to draw within Chevin forest itself.

Whilst I was there I tried to work in a variety of mediums in order to see what kind of visuals worked well using different media. Throughout the process I used acrylic on canvas, pencil, pastel, coloured pencil and watercolour with some combinations of a couple of different types of media on some pieces. I liked using some types of media more than others due to the location, I found that the use of pastels and acrylic worked well because its ability to build form, colour and tone quickly, the earthiness of the colours chosen also contributed to the success of this type of media.