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: people
Sketches of sketchers, some sketching
Sketchers at the recent wonderful Manchester Symposium, and sketches of me by other sketchers, sometimes while I sketched them; the Symposium felt like a hall of mirrors at times, a walk-in Escher! From the top there’s Lapin not sketching, Favian EE … Continue reading
Posted in comparisons, concertina sketchbooks, figures, Manchester Symposium, people, sketchcrawl, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Arno Hartman, Camera Obscura, Favian EE, Gerard Michel, Lapin, Manchester Symposium, Marion Rivolier, Nina Johansson, Paul Heaston, pencil sketches of people, Pete Scully, sketching sketchers, Tina Koyama, urban sketchers, urban sketching
9 Comments
Madeiran market
Just back from Madeira, a beautiful sub-tropical Portuguese island, 360 miles west of Morocco. Many sketches to share, starting with the main fruit and flower market in Funchal, the capital. I used an acetate grid to mark out key lines, then sketched fairly loosely in … Continue reading
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
2 Comments
Winter crowds
Bath’s Christmas shoppers filling the wet streets (a festive carousel in the far distance), battling the wind and rain, pacing the pavements, queuing for the bus home, and generally milling around town. All sketched using my new best friend, the Kuretake #8 brush-pen, … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, dogs, figures, ink brush, Lexington grey, people, street scene, urban, urban sketching
Tagged brush pen urban sketching, ink brush sketches, pavement, sketches of feet walking, sketches of people with umbrellas, sketches of shoppers, sketching in Bath, sketching street scenes, urban sketching
4 Comments
Tenby people
The last few Summer sketches from Tenby. This time people-watching around the town, moving from fountain-pen to ink-brush for the key lines. I was using a fairly ‘blunt’ brush then (a well-worn detailer water-brush) filled with dilute ink, so the pictures weren’t as crisp as the … Continue reading
Posted in beach, brush pen, comparisons, figures, holiday, ink brush, monochrome, people, people watching, technique, Tenby, urban, urban sketching, Wales
Tagged brush pen sketches, Can, ink brush sketching, moving from pen to brush, sketches of people on holiday, sketches of people waiting, sketches of seated people, Sketching in Tenby, sketching people by the sea, using ink in a water-brush
2 Comments
Lots of buskers
Lots of buskers, mostly in Bath, and some of their audiences (ranging from the totally disinterested to the partially engaged). There’s a few more sketches of barefoot Ben Powell, a bottle-neck slide cigar-box guitar player, and a couple who were accompanying … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, buskers, comparisons, figures, ink brush, Lexington grey, monochrome, people, street scene, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bobby Fuller Four, drawing street scenes, drawings of street musicians, ink brush sketching, sketching buskers, sketching in Bath, urban sketching, urban sketching technique
2 Comments
Homework…
I rarely sketch from photos, but the wonderfully encyclopaedic People of the Twenty-First Century by Hans Eijkelboom is a treasure trove of reference images for the urban sketcher. It’s a beautiful catalogue of real people going about their lives, and copying the pictures … Continue reading
Posted in faces, figures, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, people, sequential, technique, urban sketching
Tagged 'People of the Twenty First Century', Hans Eijkelboom, ink brush sketching, Malcolm Mclaren, practising urban sketching, sketching from photos, sketching people, sketching urban figures, urban sketching
3 Comments
Bird’s eye view
Three sketches from the Urban Sketchers Bristol/South West group visit to Bath last weekend. We spent an hour in the Abbey tower and on the roof, enjoying wonderful views over the city centre, and after lunch sketched in the adjacent square. … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, buildings, buskers, church, drawing buildings, figures, ink brush, monochrome, people, rooftops, sketchcrawl, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bath sketchcrawl, bird's eye view, ink brush sketching, sketch of busker and audience, sketch of rooftop view, sketches from a great height, sketching Bath Abbey, The Drifters, Urban Sketchers Bristol/South West, urban sketching
4 Comments
More pencil
I’m still enjoying using the Grafwood 6B pencil, with no rubbing out so no hesitant and uncommitted lines! It’s very smooth, perfect for quick contour sketches of people, and can go from light to dark with the lightest touch. Here … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, buildings, eye, figures, line drawing, pencil, people, self-portrait, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Jr Walker and The All Stars, pencil drawings of people, pencil sketches around town, selfie pencil sketch, sketch of windows, sketching in Bath, sketching people, sketching people walking, urban sketching
2 Comments
In praise of pencils
I’ve tried to like pencils, really I have. I love their woody simplicity, but never found one that felt right on the paper (too waxy, too smudgy etc). But a couple of weeks ago I tried a Grafwood 6B. It’s consistently … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, blind drawing, buildings, cars, figures, hands, kit, line drawing, pencil, people, street scene, technique, urban, urban sketching
Tagged drawing of hand, pencil sketches of people, pencil street-scenes, sketches of Bath, urban sketching, urban sketching kit, water-colour rose
7 Comments