I’m an Urban Sketcher…

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- bamboo dip pen
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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: urban
Twilight
It’s either late afternoon or early evening. Lights are coming on but the sky is still reflected in the car windows, colour’s fading from the cars, buildings and people. That’s the back of the Royal Crescent silhouetted in the background, a … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, drawing buildings, figures, ink brush, rooftops, street scene, twilight, Uncategorized, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bath sketching, brush-pen sketching, ink brush sketching, Kuretake #8, Memory Tapes, sketch of street at twilight, street lamps, urban sketching
8 Comments
Dusky
Midwinter twilights in Bath; low light, muted colours, an occasionally dramatic big sky, silhouetted rooftops and chimneys, hazy views, and cold fingers while sketching… Happy New Year! Kuretake #40 and water brush with Lexington grey, pencil, watercolour, A5 – various … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, drawing buildings, ink brush, rooftops, street scene, twilight, urban, urban sketching
Tagged brush pen urban sketching, ink brush sketching, Kuretake #40, sketches of skies, sketching in Bath, street-scenes at dusk, The Hotrats, twilight sketches, urban sketching
2 Comments
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
Ink-brush buildings #2
Another sketch of the rear windows of the Circus (older versions below), this time using the Kuretake #40 ink-brush. Ink-brushes are wonderfully suited to drawing soft, curved and organic subjects (people, clothing, foliage, landscapes etc) so I’m seeing how they work with … Continue reading
Posted in Bath, brush pen, buildings, comparisons, drawing buildings, ink brush, Lexington grey, sketching, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Bath urban sketching, brush pen urban sketching, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Kings Circus Bath, Kuretake #40 #8, Kuretake ink brush, urban sketching, urban sketching technique
4 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
Oxford faces
I’ll follow Stuart’s advice and post something cheerier and less morbid (mostly). So here’s a range of faces seen on a day trip to Oxford, most from the wonderful Ashmolean Museum, which I’ve posted about before. They span the whole history of portraiture, … Continue reading
Posted in body, brush pen, faces, grisaille, ink brush, Lexington grey, monochrome, museum, Oxford, people watching, sculpture, urban, urban sketching
Tagged Ashmolean museum, Fayum mummy portrait, Max Greger, museum sketching, sketch of man asleep on train, sketching in Oxford, train sketching, urban sketching
3 Comments
Return to Arnos Vale…
After our sketchcrawl I returned for another go at sketching the old crematorium oven. I tried an oblique angle this time and used the acetate grid to get the angles right before starting with the ink (see below). I entered the … Continue reading
Seasoning
Another Autumnal post, this time a garden tree I pass on the way to work. My eye was caught by the way the tree was losing leaves from the top down, revealing a branching structure that closely matches the vein pattern of the leaves, … Continue reading