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: street scene
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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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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55 passers by
I’ve added a new page to the blog, sharing books that are currently inspiring my sketching; the first is Hokusai’s Manga (‘manga’ originally meant ‘light drawings or sketches’). After copying some of his very simple but individual faces (bottom of post) I sat … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, figures, from life, inks, Lexington grey, monochrome, people, sketching, street scene, urban, waterbrush
Tagged Bath streets, brush pen drawing, brush pen sketches, Hokusai manga, inspired by Hokusai, lexington grey sketch, quick face sketches, simple face drawings, sketching passers by, street sketching, urban sketching, Van Morrison
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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
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Sketching cars #2
A second collection of car sketches. First a very cute Corvette I saw near our home; lots of beautiful details in this car, all the way down to the sting in the tail of the ‘G’ in the logo. Next there’s a full-size wire-frame model of … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, cars, coloured ink, coloured paper, from life, inks, line drawing, monochrome, street scene, urban, vehicles
Tagged Benedict Radcliffe, Citroen 2CV, Corvette Stingray, drawings of cars, Ford Anglia Deluxe, fountain pen sketches, Japanese taxi, London Taxi, sketching cars, Taxi Driver OST, urban sketching, wire frame car model
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Still lives
A family waiting outside the Bath Grand Pump Rooms, next to the Roman Baths. They sat silent and still for about 20 minutes, which made drawing them much easier. I was about 30 yards from them and couldn’t see whether they were serene, … Continue reading
28 bench-sitters
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
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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
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46 strangers
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
Posted in Bath, coloured paper, from life, line drawing, people, street scene, urban
Tagged Bath, checking phones, coloured paper, free life-drawing, gesture drawing, head down hands up, reading newspaper, seated figures, sketching pedestrians, Spacemen 3, street scenes, tourists queuing, urban sketching
1 Comment