I’m an Urban Sketcher…
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Category Archives: journeys
Fourty-eight fast faces
First twenty-nine drivers, sketched from the passenger seat while overtaking on the motorway. Their faces were only glimpsed in passing, so I had to quickly memorise the key lines, but they were always in full profile which helped simplify things! … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, cars, collections, faces, ink brush, journeys, Lexington grey, people, street scene, urban, urban sketching, vehicles
Tagged Bath sketches, brush-pen sketching, collections of faces, fast sketches of faces, ink brush sketching, Kuretake #40 brush pen, Motörhead, sketches from a car, sketching faces with brush-pen, urban sketching
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Car Parklife
I think a key part of urban sketching is depicting the stuff of everyday life, no matter how banal. So here are three quick views from the car while parked at motorway services during the trip to Scotland and back. That’s it, nothing to add! … Continue reading
Posted in cars, coloured ink, coloured paper, holiday, journeys, Lexington grey, pencil, travel, urban sketching, vehicles, waiting
Tagged drawing cars, fountain pen sketches, line drawings of cars, motorway services, sketches from a car, sketches of car parks, sketching the banal, sketching while waiting, sketching with ink and pencil, Talking Heads, urban sketching
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Mendip views
A break from urban sketching with some rural pictures! They were all done in the Mendips, which rise above the Somerset Levels and have surprisingly good views for their size. An ink-filled water-brush was perfect for drawing the pattern of trees and hedges in the fields … Continue reading
Posted in clouds, coloured ink, coloured paper, journeys, landscape, seasonal, watercolour sketch
Tagged Brent Knoll, Gorillaz, ink brush sketches, path through fields, rural sketching, sketches of fields, sketches of trees and hedges, Somerset Levels, Steep Holm, the Mendips, watercolour sketches
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En route
Fellow passengers on the way to Cordoba; waiting at the airport, sleeping on the plane, and passing time on the train. Pencil works well for larger and more detailed portraits, it can be hard for a face to recover from a poorly placed ink-line… (My previous post got … Continue reading
Sunshine
Back to the silvery grey light of England after a week of golden sunshine in Cordoba, Spain. I’ll scan and post the sketches over the next few weeks, including many attempts to capture the Holy Week parades (tall pointy hats, huge … Continue reading
Posted in buildings, Cordoba, from life, holiday, journeys, Lexington grey, monument, people, street scene, travel, trees, urban, watercolour sketch
Tagged Afternoon shade, Cordoba, Cordoba sketches, Cordoba street scene sketch, Court of Oranges, Mezquita, Mezquita bell tower sketch, Palm trees sketch, The Legends, urban sketching
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Japanese shrines
Four shrines in Japan, where many of the statues wear red bibs (‘yodarekake‘), placed on them as a sign of devotion and usually faded to a soft pink in the sun and the rain. The second sketch is looking down one section … Continue reading
26 more Japanese commuters
More quick sketches from Japan, this time a collection of commuters at Kyoto main station around 10pm. I was sketching from one of the many high balconies (see below), pleased to catch a couple of salarymen in the middle of a … Continue reading
Posted in coloured paper, from life, inks, Japan, journeys, kit, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, night, people, trains, urban
Tagged coloured paper, Japanese bowing, Japanese commuters, Kyoto station, monochrome, salarymen, simple sketching kit, sketching commuters, sketching in Japan, sketching with fountain pen, The Jam, urban sketching
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An urban stroll
I’ve been reading Freehand Drawing and Discovery by James Richards. Richards is an architect so his drawings look like planning proposals, but it’s got a lot of good tips on creating simple but effective urban landscapes. It also mentions ‘serial visions’, a … Continue reading
Posted in buildings, from life, inks, journeys, line drawing, sequential, street scene, technique, travel, urban
Tagged city walls, Freehand Drawing and Discovery, Gordon Cullen, pedestrians, sequential sketches, serial vision, sketching an urban walk, street scenes, Tenby streets, Vision On gallery, walking through a town
7 Comments
From a moving vehicle
A collection of fast drive-by sketches; trees seen from a train, and vehicles from a car. The trees were glimpsed for a few seconds as we shot past, so a brush-pen was ideal for quickly capturing their individual shapes and key lines, with … Continue reading
Posted in collections, coloured paper, from life, inks, journeys, monochrome, sketching, technique, trains, travel, urban, vehicles
Tagged drive-by sketches, individual trees, Lexington grey ink, sketching from a vehicle, sketching on coloured paper, sketching on the move, sketching trees, sketching vehicles, The Temptations, tree shapes
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Mostly drawing 