Category Archives: line drawing

28 bench-sitters

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Another collection of strangers, mostly tourists, sat on benches in the square next to Bath Abbey. They’re chatting, reading, texting, pondering, relaxing, waiting, eating ice-cream, and just watching, like me. The square’s a great place for sketching people, they usually stay … Continue reading →

Posted in Bath, coloured paper, from life, inks, kit, Lexington grey, line drawing, people, sketching, street scene, urban, waiting, waterbrush | Tagged Bad Blue Heron, Bath Abbey, Brown 41, coloured paper, fountain pen, Gil Scott-Heron, Noodlers inks for sketching, people in the city, people watching, seated people, sketching in ink, sketching people, urban sketching, water-brush filled with ink | 1 Comment

An urban stroll

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Ed Mostly

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

Seated

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Ed Mostly

A seated figure sketched while waiting for a couple of minutes at the Sports Village at Bath University; I used the rest of the page to test inks on top of paint. One corner of the testing was oddly beautiful, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Bath, from life, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, people, sketching | Tagged Cornershop, fountain pen sketching, ink testing, quick figure sketch, serendipity, sketch of seated figure, sketching people | Leave a comment

2 hands, 2 keys, 2 watches, and some scribbles

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Ed Mostly

My 201st post is more sketches of things found on the table before going to bed. I’ve done a sketch every day for the last 3 years, and it’s these late night ones that are often the hardest to start, but also the most rewarding. … Continue reading →

Posted in coloured paper, every day matters, from life, hands, home, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, objects | Tagged bunch of keys, daily drawing, everyday drawing, fountain pen, Hand of Fatima, Kaiser Chiefs, late night sketches, sketches of hands, sketches of keys, sketches of watches | 2 Comments

Feather and tea

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Ed Mostly

A couple of sketches done using found/improvised resources during a trip to Grinda, the Stockholm island where I drew the 38 boats. The first was drawn using a dip-nib cut into the tip of a swan’s feather that I found (a bottle lid with … Continue reading →

Posted in dip pen, from life, holiday, inks, kit, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, pencil, technique | Tagged Band of Horses, cutting a quill nib, dip pen, Ferry views, Grinda, improvised sketching resources, Lexington grey, monochrome sketch, quill nib, sepia sketch, sketching from life, swan feather, tea as wash | 1 Comment

Mostly painting

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Ed Mostly

I’ve been reading ‘Urban Watercolor Sketching’ by Felix Scheinberger (here’s Tina’s review). It’s not very ‘urban’, but I recommend it as an enthusiastic, conversational and practical guide to water-colour sketching, with a strong focus on the power of colour. So I’m trying to be a bit … Continue reading →

Posted in colour, from life, fruit, kit, line drawing, technique, watercolour sketch | Tagged 'Urban Watercolor Sketching', apples, bananas, Billie Holiday, cake stand, Felix Scheinberger, fruit sketches, line drawing, oranges, watercolor sketching | 2 Comments

Swedish birds

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Ed Mostly

A collection of birds seen in Stockholm. First there are two sketches from the Biologiska Museet, a beautiful wooden Victorian museum full of dioramas populated by stuffed animals who’ll hold a pose for as long as you need (the first picture looks like a scene from … Continue reading →

Posted in animals, Birds, from life, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, museum, Stockholm, Uncategorized, watercolour sketch | Tagged Biologiska Museum, duck, goose, heron, Mercury Rev, Skansen, sketching birds, sketching from nature, sketching stuffed animals, Stockholm, swan family, swans, watercolour sketches, wolf | 2 Comments

38 boats

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Ed Mostly

While in Stockholm we caught a ferry to Grinda, one of 30,000 (!) islands in the surrounding archipelago. We swam in the warm Baltic and I tried to sketch the many pleasure craft that passed. As most were going fairly fast I ended up with a collection … Continue reading →

Posted in boats, coloured paper, holiday, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, pencil, Stockholm | Tagged Grinda, kayakers, Modest Mouse, monochrome, one minute drawings, sailing boats, sketching boats, speed boats, Stockholm archipelago, white pen sketches | 5 Comments

Take off, in-flight, landing

Posted on August 9, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Scenes from a flight to Stockholm… A sketchy impression of the rolling patchwork landscape around Bristol airport as the plane took off, random images from a flight safety card (including a wildly optimistic ‘landing on water’), and planes waiting at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport under low … Continue reading →

Posted in airplane, airport, landscape, line drawing, monochrome, pencil, sketching, Stockholm | Tagged airport sketch, Arlanda airport, in-flight drawing, landing on water, Lexington grey, Major Lazer, monochrome sketch, patchwork fields, plane safety card, simple figures, sketching planes, take off view | Leave a comment

46 strangers

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Urban sketching turns the busy city centre into a giant, free (clothed) life-drawing class. It’s great practise for gesture drawing, and you’ve got to be fast to catch the pedestrians, but some are sitting ducks… Here are members of the public around Bath over … Continue reading →