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: line drawing
Street parking
More cars parked up on Bath streets. I didn’t use the acetate grid for these, but did have to work hard to get the relative size of the receding cars correct, to see what was there and not what I … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, cars, from life, Lexington grey, line drawing, sketching, street scene, urban, vehicles
Tagged Bath street sketch, drawing a street scene, drawing of line of cars, drawing what you see, fountain pen sketch, Public Enemy, receding cars, relative size, sketching cars, urban sketching
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Camden Road
Chimney pots and windows at the back of Camden Road in Bath, sketched from the road above, while leaning on a high wall (in the foreground bottom left). It’s another view of Bath where the chaotic backs of the buildings are more interesting than the … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, buildings, cars, from life, grisaille, Lexington grey, line drawing, street scene, technique, urban
Tagged acetate grid, Bath, Camden Road, chimney pots, composition of sketch, Fatboy Slim, fountain pen sketch, grisaille, rear windows, rooftop sketch, street scene, urban sketching, using a grid when sketching
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Waiting in town
A bus queue lined up alongside Bath Abbey, and more tourists sat on benches (previously, and here). Drawing directly with ink means ‘mistakes’ are visible, recording the process of feeling out where the lines need to go. Usually I just restate the line, … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, body, buildings, figures, from life, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, people, street scene, technique, urban, waiting
Tagged Bath Abbey, Bath tourists, bus queue, couple on bench, Fail better, fountain pen drawings, mistakes in drawings, people on benches, restating lines, sketches of people in town, The Byrds, urban sketching
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Busted
A fine pair of portrait busts from the upper floor of Bath’s Victoria Gallery (you can see both of them in the linked photo). First there’s Sir Cloudesley Shovell (honestly), a famous C17th admiral and guitarist. Then George 3rd, king of Britain for 59 … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, coloured ink, coloured paper, exhibitions, faces, figures, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, museum, objects, sculpture
Tagged Bath gallery, drawing sculpture, fountain pen sketching, George Harrison, King George 3rd, noodlers inks, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, sketching in galleries, sketching portrait busts, sketching technique, urban sketching, Victoria Art Gallery
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Cars, at rest
Parked cars on the road approaching Lansdown Crescent (where the sheep were). Below is the picture without the water-colour glaze, then without the Lexington grey ink washes, revealing the ink drawing that I did on site. The pencil grid helped with the basic placing … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, buildings, cars, from life, grisaille, Lexington grey, line drawing, street scene, technique, urban, vehicles
Tagged Bath street sketch, cars on street, drawing cars, fountain pen sketch, Lansdown Crescent, sketch of parked cars, sketching technique, step by step sketch, Streetview sketch, The Who, urban sketching, using a grid for drawing
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Monochrome flames
A couple of mid-winter sketches, trying to capture the dancing shapes of a log fire. I drew ‘blind’, watching the flames to catch their individual fluid shapes, feeling out the lines with a pencil, and occasionally looking down at the page to get their location about right. They reminded me … Continue reading
Open wide…
I’ve tried ‘extreme sketching’ a couple of times before, drawing while walking along (see bottom of post), during a paintball session, in the rain, and while on a merry-go-round. I enjoyed the challenge and the resulting shaky lines, so last week I had a … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, coloured paper, eye, from life, hands, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, pencil, people, self-portrait, waterbrush, white marker pen
Tagged dental work, extreme sketching, faces staring down, Nico, open mouth drawing, patient's eye view, sketching at dentist, sketching teeth, sketching while walking, Velvet Underground, view from dentist's chair
4 Comments
Drink?
A glass of milk, mugs of tea, and a glass of water; late night drink sketches (more here). I’m still fascinated by the way that something so simple can be so tricky to get right; the combination of ellipses, curious lighting … Continue reading
Posted in coloured paper, domestic, from life, glass, gouache, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, objects
Tagged cup of tea, drawing cups and mugs, drawing ellipses, fountain pen sketches, glass of milk, glass of water, mug of tea, Rolling Stones, sketching at home, sketching drinks
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Wiry views
Drawn at dusk, sat on the bottom steps of The Shrubbery (previously), looking down Harley Street in Bath. My eye was caught by the telephone wires and chimneys silhouetted against the winter sky. I was sorry that I didn’t get … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, buildings, cars, coloured ink, from life, grisaille, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, sky, street scene, urban, vehicles, waterbrush
Tagged Bath sketch, Bath street, chimney silhouettes, drawing cars, fountain pen sketch, Japanese cabling, overhead wires, rooftops sketch, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, sketching in ink, street scene sketch, telephone cables overhead, telephone wires, urban sketching, winter sky
3 Comments
The life of stuff
I’m looking forward to more outdoor sketching in Spring, but in the meantime here are some well worn shoes (previously), a phone recharging, utensils hanging in the kitchen, and a bag waiting by the door… Everyday domestic scenes, the stuff of … Continue reading
Posted in coloured ink, coloured paper, domestic, every day matters, from life, home, inks, kitchen, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, objects, waterbrush
Tagged domestic sketches, fountain pen sketching, ink in water-brush, James Booker, kitchen sketch, monochrome sketches, sketch of phone charging, sketch of shoes, sketch of shopping bag, sketching with Noodlers inks, waterproof inks
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