I’m an Urban Sketcher…

Categories
-
-
Archives
Blog Stats
- 477,626 hits
Gallery
Tags
- bamboo dip pen
- bamboo dip pen sketches
- Bath
- Bath Abbey
- brush-pen sketching
- brush pen
- cafe sketching
- city
- coloured paper
- daily drawing
- De Atramentis inks
- dip pen
- every day matters
- fountain pen
- fountain pen sketch
- fountain pen sketches
- fountain pen sketching
- ink brush sketches
- ink brush sketching
- Istanbul
- Kuretake #8
- Lexington grey
- Lexington grey ink
- Manchester Symposium
- marker pen
- monochrome
- noodlers inks
- objects
- people
- sketching in Bath
- sketching people
- Stockholm
- Talking Heads
- The Clash
- The Kinks
- urban sketching
- urban sketching kit
- urban sketching technique
- Venice
- white gelly roll pen
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: inks
Shrubbery steps
Bath is full of steep footpaths, and I’ve sketched this one several times before, always looking down. Here I’m looking up for a change, on an overcast afternoon. 1mm Pigma pen, water-brush with dilute Lexington grey and Windsor and Newton inks, … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, coloured paper, from life, inks, Lexington grey, sketching, urban
Tagged David Bowie, footpath, looking up, steps, The Shrubbery
Leave a comment
Green Park Station
Saturday morning sketching with Louise and Mark at the farmer’s market in Green Park Station, Bath. (The last train left the station in 1962, part of the notorious Beeching cuts.) The line drawing took about 30 minutes, with another 20 … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, buildings, from life, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, panorama, people, sketching, urban
Tagged Beeching cuts, farmer's market, Green Park Station, Poppy day, Remembrance Sunday, The Monkees
2 Comments
A toad, a giraffe, two elephants and a Gorgonite
Toy figures are well-behaved models, holding their poses indefinitely. They also give the opportunity to sketch rarely seen creatures, and from unusual angles. Broad dip pen with Carbon black ink, water brush with dilute Carbon black ink, A5 White Uni … Continue reading
Posted in animals, collections, dip pen, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, marker pen, monochrome, objects, toys
Tagged baby elephant, Carbon black ink, elephants, giraffe, Gorgonite, mug, toad, Tom Jones, toys
Leave a comment
The Shrubbery
Looking down The Shrubbery, a steep path near our home in Bath. You have to squint a bit for it to work, and that’s a conservatory half-way up the house on the left, built on a balcony. (I blended dilute Winsor … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, buildings, from life, inks, kit, monument, urban, waterbrush
Tagged city view, complementary colours, Primal Scream, roof tops, steep path, The Shrubbery, Winsor and Newton inks
2 Comments
‘Fail better’
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett A good description of learning to sketch, amongst other things, and my frequent attempts at drawing my left hand are an excellent example! So here’s the latest batch … Continue reading
Posted in body, from life, hands, inks, pencil, sketching, watercolour sketch
Tagged coloured ink water-brushes, Fail better, hatching, Samuel Beckett, The Replacements
1 Comment
Looser lines
An early Spring Saturday with Jim in Bath Abbey Courtyard, where we tried to sketch with minimal looking down at the paper, ‘blind contour drawing’. We didn’t manage the recommended “90% looking at subject, 10% checking the picture’s progress” proportions, but … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, from life, inks, people, urban
Tagged Bath Abbey, bench, blind contour, courtyard, expressive lines, people, public
Leave a comment
Now in glorious Technicolor, or not
A view from the Accademia Bridge in Venice, sketched quickly using a thick marker pen before my family got too bored. Marker pen with carbon ink, A4 As an experiment I used a photo taken at the same time to … Continue reading
Posted in from life, inks, kit, marker pen, monochrome, sketching, urban, Venice
Tagged Academia Bridge, city, fade to grey, Grand Canal, ink washes, monochrome, tonal values, Venice
3 Comments
No knead
A crusty loaf baked using the very tolerant and adaptable no knead bread recipe, developed by Jim Lahey. This became a lesson in landscape painting, with miniature valleys, hills and peaks, all looking slightly volcanic… I was interested to see how rich and … Continue reading
Posted in food, from life, home, inks, sketching, waterbrush
Tagged bread, ink, Lexington grey, no-knead
Leave a comment
Ink brushes
I’ve been filling water-brushes with dilute inks, creating another portable limited palette of colours that I can blend on the page. I’m using Windsor and Newton inks which are transparent and quickly become waterproof, enabling me to layer colours, building up tints, tone, … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, grisaille, inks, kit, Lexington grey, Stantonbury, waterbrush
Tagged Bath, brush pen, colour and shape, grisaille, inks, Lexington grey, Stantonbury, water brush, waterbrush
1 Comment