I’m an Urban Sketcher…

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Blogroll
- Antonia Santolaya/Enrique Flores A chance to browse through 26 travel sketchbooks. Lots of fresh watercolour, ink and pencil location pictures.
- Buttnekkiddoodles Don Colley’s blog, sharing fabulous brush-pen drawings of people and much else. He’s a big fan of Pitt Artist brush pens.
- Danny Gregory His book ‘The Creative License’ got me sketching, and his other books have helped to keep me going. He has a wonderfully loose style, using dip-pens, saturated colour inks etc.
- Handprint Exceptionally comprehensive information on watercolour paints and equipment. Exhaustive details on pigments, translucency, comparing brands etc. Essential viewing for the true obsessive.
- James Gurney A mine of information on ‘plein air’ painting and sketching from the author of ‘Dinotopia’. Daily posts, always interesting.
- Nina Johansson Stockholm based urban sketching, with lovely clarity and glowing colours. Lots of useful information on sketching kit that helped to get me started.
- Russel Stutler Lots of very useful information on brush pens, palettes, sketching techniques. Based in Japan.
- Steven Reddy Great use of pen drawing and grey ink washes, sometimes combined with clear colour on top.
- The Sketching Forum Informal sharing of ideas, techniques, pictures and general chat about sketching. Set up by Russ Stutler.
- Urban Sketchers A constant parade of individual responses to the challenge of urban sketching. Always good for some inspiration, a new approach to try…
Category Archives: figures
Lots of buskers
Lots of buskers, mostly in Bath, and some of their audiences (ranging from the totally disinterested to the partially engaged). There’s a few more sketches of barefoot Ben Powell, a bottle-neck slide cigar-box guitar player, and a couple who were accompanying … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, buskers, comparisons, figures, ink brush, Lexington grey, monochrome, people, street scene, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bobby Fuller Four, drawing street scenes, drawings of street musicians, ink brush sketching, sketching buskers, sketching in Bath, urban sketching, urban sketching technique
2 Comments
Homework…
I rarely sketch from photos, but the wonderfully encyclopaedic People of the Twenty-First Century by Hans Eijkelboom is a treasure trove of reference images for the urban sketcher. It’s a beautiful catalogue of real people going about their lives, and copying the pictures … Continue reading
Posted in faces, figures, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, people, sequential, technique, urban sketching
Tagged 'People of the Twenty First Century', Hans Eijkelboom, ink brush sketching, Malcolm Mclaren, practising urban sketching, sketching from photos, sketching people, sketching urban figures, urban sketching
3 Comments
Bird’s eye view
Three sketches from the Urban Sketchers Bristol/South West group visit to Bath last weekend. We spent an hour in the Abbey tower and on the roof, enjoying wonderful views over the city centre, and after lunch sketched in the adjacent square. … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, buildings, buskers, church, drawing buildings, figures, ink brush, monochrome, people, rooftops, sketchcrawl, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bath sketchcrawl, bird's eye view, ink brush sketching, sketch of busker and audience, sketch of rooftop view, sketches from a great height, sketching Bath Abbey, The Drifters, Urban Sketchers Bristol/South West, urban sketching
4 Comments
Oxford Museums #2
After graveyards and guns I’ll lighten the mood with some cheerier items from the Ashmolean, “the oldest public museum in Britain, and the first purpose-built public museum in the world”, which grew out Tradescant’s Ark, a C17th ‘cabinet of curiosity’. First there’s a … Continue reading
End of the line?
I love a good memento mori, and this is the most striking one I’ve sketched so far. It’s a decommissioned crematorium oven (!) in the museum at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, found while on a sketchcrawl there with the Bristol/South … Continue reading
Posted in Bristol, brush pen, cemetery, death, figures, Lexington grey, monochrome, museum, urban sketching
Tagged Arnos vale cemetery, Belle and Sebastian, Bristol South West Urban Sketchers, crematorium oven, fountain pen sketching, graveyard sketching, memento mori, pareidolia, sketches of graveyard statues, urban sketching
10 Comments
Analogue selfies
Um, here goes… thirty self-portraits done over the last few years, usually late evening when I can’t find anything else to sketch to keep up the daily habit… I’m really quite a cheery soul, but the combination of staring into a mirror, and … Continue reading
54 people, mostly seated, and 2 dogs
During the Summer holidays I binged on sketching the general public in Bath, my default approach to ‘urban sketching’. I enjoy the seasonal differences: sunglasses, shady hats and bare arms in Summer; compared to high collars, long coats and wooly hats in Winter! … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, clothing, comparisons, figures, ink brush, Lexington grey, monochrome, people watching, seasonal, sketchcrawl, technique, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bath sketch-crawl, drawings of seated figures, ink brush sketching, seasonal differences, sketching figures, sketching in Bath, The Mynabirds, urban sketching, urban sketching technique
3 Comments
Regency Parade
Quick ink-brush sketches of yesterday’s ‘Grand Regency Costumed Parade’, part of the annual Jane Austen festival held in Bath. The parade ended appropriately in Parade Gardens, where some of the 500 participants stood still long enough to be drawn. On the right is … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, clothing, figures, parades, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bath Regency parade, Camera Obscura, early Naval costumes, ink brush sketches, Jane Austen costume sketch, Jane Austen Festival, Parade Gardens, Regency costume sktches, sketch of hobby horse, The Jam, urban sketching
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At the fair again
Carters Steam Fair (“100 smiles per hour!“) have been back to our local park. I didn’t draw the Steam Boats, as promised last time, but I did try sketching the merry-go-round horses; this was tricky as they kept setting off again every 2 … Continue reading
Posted in animals, Bath, coloured paper, fairground, figures, line drawing, park, people watching, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Carter's Steam Fair, fairground sketches, merry-go-round horses, Ride, sketch of merry go round, sketch of photographers, sketch of plein air painter, sketching at the fair, urban sketching
2 Comments
More pencil
I’m still enjoying using the Grafwood 6B pencil, with no rubbing out so no hesitant and uncommitted lines! It’s very smooth, perfect for quick contour sketches of people, and can go from light to dark with the lightest touch. Here … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, buildings, eye, figures, line drawing, pencil, people, self-portrait, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Jr Walker and The All Stars, pencil drawings of people, pencil sketches around town, selfie pencil sketch, sketch of windows, sketching in Bath, sketching people, sketching people walking, urban sketching
2 Comments