I’m an Urban Sketcher…
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Category Archives: pencil
Six-score selfies
A round up of recent(ish) selfies. First is my take on the ‘One week, One hundred people’ sketching challenge from earlier this year. One hundred mirror selfies in one week, all tiny and done with pencil and smudge stump. I … Continue reading
A mixed bag
This month I have been mostly using Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils, in ‘dark indigo’. They’re my new favourite mark-maker; soft and responsive on the paper, lots of pigment for rich lines, and barely any smudging. They combine well with watercolour, … Continue reading
Just a scratch
Quick sketches while being vaccinated over the last few months. The centre was very quiet, very calm, and oddly normal given the strangeness and relative novelty of what was going on.
Posted in Bath, pandemic, pencil, people, urban, urban sketching
Tagged covid sketching, urban sketching, vaccination sketch, Velvet Underground
1 Comment
Next door
(Apologies for the recent lack of posts. Lockdown etc has broken/changed/started many habits, including a drastic reduction in my use of social media, which is probably a Good Thing. The daily drawing from life continues in spite of it all) … Continue reading
Posted in faces, pencil, people, portrait
Tagged M Pop Muzik, pencil portraits, sketches of neighbours
10 Comments
Pocket drawing board
(I don’t think I’ve done a ‘sketching kit’ post for a while. They’re usually popular so here goes…) To keep up the daily ‘drawing from life’ habit (nearly ten years now) I make sure I’ve always got sketching materials on … Continue reading
Posted in airplane, clouds, figures, kit, pencil, urban, urban sketching
Tagged park sketches, pencil sketches, pocket drawing board, Sandy Denny, tiny sketch kit, urban sketching
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Wonky, skew-whiff, bockety, odd
Last week I accidentally wandered into cubism through blind-drawn continuous-line selfies… I recommend having a go, they only take a minute and the results are so strange that you can’t make any ‘mistakes’. Hold a pencil ready to draw on … Continue reading
Posted in blind drawing, daily drawing, faces, line drawing, pencil, self-portrait
Tagged blind drawing, blind drawn selfies, continuous line drawings, continuous line selfies, The Contours
Comments Off on Wonky, skew-whiff, bockety, odd
Pencil selfies
The latest batch of quick late evening mirror selfies from my daily drawing habit. All done using the blackest and least smudgy pencil that I’ve found, the Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black. It’s high carbon and low (no?) graphite so the … Continue reading
Wet Welsh weekend
Instead of walking along the Mendips (sketched here, and here) last weekend we went walking in Crickhowell, South Wales, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. Here’s a quick sketch from the ruined castle shortly after we arrived, rain threatening… … Continue reading
Back to front with gouache
Maru Godas’ work and the arrival of sunshine have inspired me to give gouache another chance. I’m enjoying exploring its flexible sketchy possibilities, love the physical presence that opaque colour has on the paper, and it’s speeded up some aspects of … Continue reading
Posted in coloured paper, drawing buildings, gouache, palettes, pencil, sketching, technique, urban, urban sketching, white marker pen
Tagged Amerigo Gazaway, gouache and ink drawing, gouache sketches, Maru Godas, Schmincke gouache, sketching palette, urban sketching, white sketching pens
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Compare and contrast…
I love the way urban sketching explicitly celebrates the different ways we respond to a location. Here’s an example from Monday when I had the opportunity to sketch in Bath with Gary Yeung (a member of the USK Hong Kong … Continue reading
Mostly drawing 