Drawing the Sierras

I went on a big old long backpacking trip for a week.

I managed to carry a pad of paper and pencils along with me, in addition to clothes, food, sleeping bag and tent (and various other required sundries).

We were in the Eastern Sierra.

I decided to steal an idea from my dad, and combine my notes and my drawings into a single page.

It turns out that most days, I was pretty beat after a day of hiking, and didn’t have a ton of time or energy for much other than setting up camp, getting fed, and falling asleep.

I did get a couple days of drawing in. This first is from the first night:

Big McGee Lake Pencil Drawing

Big McGee Lake Pencil Drawing

This second is after a couple days of hiking, we had a short day climbing up into Pioneer Basin:

Pioneer Basin Upper Lake Pencil Drawing

Pioneer Basin Upper Lake Pencil Drawing

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Drawing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Drawing the Sierras”

  1. hansi says:
    August 31, 2011 at 5:47 am

    Wow…You really captured the Sierra landscape. It’s pretty awesome in the back country. Still a lot of snow for August {finally made it to Lone Pine last week; lots of run-off still coming down the creeks. I really like these drawings; I’m impressed.

  2. Sean says:
    August 31, 2011 at 8:50 am

    Thanks! I found it pretty tough to draw, there is a lot of detail amongst the rocks and trees that is difficult to portray, without spending a lot more time (that I didn’t have) on each drawing.

  3. Ralph@Retirement Lifestyle says:
    September 7, 2011 at 8:58 am

    I like those drawings too. I am trying to relearn what I remember from drawing classes in college. I like line drawing but I am piss poor at filtering out the unnecessary ones. Then I like shading too. I’m not much good at focus.

  4. Sean says:
    September 7, 2011 at 9:42 am

    @Ralph,

    Thanks! These drawings were very difficult for me, because when I looked at the mountainsides, there was a TON of detail in the rocks, shadows, trees, shrubs, etc. It took a bit of work to try to figure out how to simplify this.

    That’s great that you are picking up the pencil/pen again and drawing! Are we gonna see them posted up?

  5. Dave Doolin says:
    September 11, 2011 at 10:27 am

    It has always amazed me how really good artists can get maximum impact from minimal drawing.

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