Capturing the Light in a Landscape
- Blog
- June 17, 2026
- 24 mins
We filmed the Rural Sketch Course across a handful of Lake District locations over a few days, and the one thing that changed at every single one was the light. Some mornings the sun sat low and warm. Some afternoons a cloud parked itself overhead and the whole valley went flat. Watching Ian work through all of it, in all of it, taught us more about capturing light than any single tip could.
Because here’s what every outdoor sketcher runs into sooner or later: the light you started with is gone by the time you’ve drawn the first tree. So how do you capture light in a landscape sketch when the light itself won’t hold still? Here’s how Ian does it, location by location.
Light is what makes a landscape feel real
It’s worth starting with why this matters so much. A landscape sketch isn’t really about the field or the wall or the trees. Those are just shapes, and shapes alone sit flat on the page. What makes a sketch feel like a place you could step into is the light: warmth on one side, cool shade on the other, a long shadow stretching across the grass.
Paint a green field evenly, all one tone, and it just sits there. Add the light, what it touches and what it leaves in shadow, and the same field gains a time of day and a temperature. That’s the difference between a drawing that records a place and one that remembers what being there felt like.
The first decision: where is the light coming from?
Before Ian makes a single mark, he works out where the light is and fixes it in his head. That one decision quietly settles everything that follows: which sides of things are lit, which sit in shadow, and where the darks need to go. Skip it, and you end up reacting to the scene shape by shape, which is how sketches turn muddy and uncertain.
The trick is to choose a version of the light and stay loyal to it, even as the real sky carries on changing. You are not trying to keep up with the weather. You are telling the story of one moment, well.
“What we’re trying to do in a pre-sketch is simplify it, so that when we do the workshop piece, I know exactly the route that we’re going to take. Where we’re not over-layering everything, and making it too complicated, we’re just letting things go and really capturing the essence of the scene.”
Reading the light, scene by scene
The best way to show what that looks like is to walk through a few of the locations as Ian sketched them.
Great Langdale
The morning we filmed in Great Langdale the conditions were close to perfect: sun out, wind dropped. Ian noticed straight away that the sun was sitting over on the left, so he read the two big trees from there, lit edges on the left, shadow falling to the right. When the sun pushed through a little more he just grinned and said the light was changing and it was gorgeous, then got it down quickly before it moved on. The lesson: name the direction early, and let it organise the whole sketch.
River Brathay
The Brathay was the opposite kind of day, a proper Lakeland microclimate, sunny and warm one minute and threatening rain the next. The light came sharp across the scene as the sun slid in and out of cloud. Rather than repaint every time it shifted, Ian picked the version he liked, the sun on the scene, and committed to it. When it broke through again he mentioned he could feel the warmth on his hands. That warmth is worth chasing onto the page, because a sketch that remembers how the light felt beats an accurate one that feels like nothing.
Little Langdale
At Little Langdale there was a dark mass of trees sitting against the brightness of the sun behind them. Ian kept it genuinely dark, because the contrast with the lit sky was the whole point, but he resisted going pure black. A shadow reads as shadow because of what sits next to it, not because you have drowned it in ink.
Let the shadows carry the light
Here’s the part that surprises people most. The bright areas are not where the work happens. The darks are.
Drop a confident shadow under a tree, along the base of a wall, on the shaded face of a building, and the lit areas suddenly lift off the page. A pale patch on its own is just a pale patch. Put a deep shadow beside it and it reads as sunlight. So the shadows are not the dull job you save for the end. They are what makes the whole thing glow. Lay them in early and lay them in with conviction.
The brightest light is a gap you protect
If shadow is the first surprise, this is the second. The very brightest light in a sketch is usually the part you never touch.
The clean white of the paper, left alone, becomes the sun on the top of a wall, the glint on water, the lit edge of a roof. The moment colour goes over it, it stops being light and turns into paint. So the real skill is knowing what to guard. You work carefully around those small white shapes and you let them be. It feels wrong at first, leaving gaps, not finishing, but those untouched scraps of paper do more for the sketch than almost anything you add.
What to do when the light is flat
Not every day hands you long shadows and golden warmth. Plenty of our filming days were grey and even, the Lakes do flat, overcast light as well as anywhere. So it’s worth knowing what to do when there’s no obvious sun to read.
First, look harder for the small differences, because they’re still there: the slightly darker underside of a wall, the cooler grey of the far hills against the nearer ones, the one soft break in the cloud that lifts a patch of field. Flat light is quieter, not absent.
Second, you can simply decide the light. Imagine where the sun would be if it came out, off to the left, say, and light the scene as if it were. Nobody is checking. A made-up but consistent light beats a faithfully recorded flat one every time. A grey day is no excuse for a grey sketch.
Why midsummer is the best time to practise
If you want to get good at this quickly, now is the moment. Midsummer brings the longest, lowest, most golden evenings of the whole year. Low sun does half the work for you: the shadows stretch right out across the ground, colours warm up, and the gap between the lit and shaded sides of everything is about as generous as it ever gets.
You don’t need a dramatic view, either. The end of your own road in the hour before sunset will teach you more about light than a week of flat midday skies.
Final Thoughts
After all of that, capturing light comes down to three habits worth keeping by your sketching bag.
- First, before you start, work out where the light is coming from and commit to it for the whole sketch.
- Second, put a shadow shape in early, on the side away from the light, and build your darks with confidence so the lit areas lift against them.
- Third, choose your one or two brightest highlights and leave them as bare paper. Guard them.
Do those three things and your landscapes will stop looking flat and start to feel warm, lit and real, whatever the sky decides to do while you work.
Ready to learn more?
This is the heart of the Rural Sketch Course, where Ian works through these very Lake District scenes, deciding where the light falls and building each sketch around it, location by location. If you’d like to see how it all fits together, it’s a lovely place to start.
Capturing the Light in a Landscape
About the Artist
Ian Fennelly focuses on capturing urban spaces and environments by drawing the places where people have been without actually including them.
His process involves layering watercolors, brush pens, and liners to build depth, texture, and detail, allowing them to fully immerse in the scene while adapting to changes in their surroundings.
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