More from the small pocket-sized notebook, tiny landscapes this time, with a fair few from early morning dog-walking, featuring clouds that caught my eye, occasional goats and passers by.
I’m an Urban Sketcher…
Gallery
The great indoors
A current theme, mostly driven by the weather, is cafe sketching. The busier the cafe the better, partly to give me more subjects to draw, but also to make my large sketchbook/bamboo dip-pen set-up slightly less conspicuous… All are in Bath, incorporating varying degrees of ‘natural/wonky perspective’, and almost all are in dip-pen. Then 16 other fairly recent cafe/pub sketches.
Tate Modern
Sketches from a recent visit to Tate Modern; visitors encountering ‘Babel 2001’, taking a break in the cafe, viewing Karl Blossfeldt photos, and waiting at Paddington for the train home.
Posted in bamboo dip pen, cafe, exhibitions, London, urban, urban sketching
Tagged art gallery sketches, cafe sketch, Paddington, Tate Modern, urban sketching
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‘Cheer up, it’s already happened…’
A commitment to daily drawing from life (six years so far…) often means relying on late night selfies. Here’s the latest collection of around fifty (!), with the usual apology for the severe/odd/blank expressions. The first batch were all done in my small Muji book, and almost all in grey Document ink using a Sailor fude pen, spot the one drawn ‘blind’. The second batch were done in a bigger book using all sorts.
And as a special festive bonus these are followed by 100 previous attempts from the past few years. There’s probably a very dull animation lurking in all these frames…
Posted in collections, daily drawing, faces, fude pen, self-portrait
Tagged daily drawing, Sailor Fude pen, selfie sketching, sketching self-portraits, The Specials
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daily dog
Daily sketches of our six months old/young Schnoodle puppy Mo; it took a while to be able to see the key contour lines of her body within the fluffy coat! Here she’s mostly dozing, with additional horses, camels, loyal servants, passers-by and a vulture for variety… All sketched in a small Muji book, using grey Document ink in a Sailor 40 degree fude pen.
Posted in daily drawing, dogs, domestic, fude pen
Tagged Document ink, puppy sketches, Sailor Fude pen, Schnoodle, sketches of dogs, The Black Keys
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Brief catch up…
Four recent urban sketches, all in Bath, all in bamboo dip-pen, and all from the big square sketchbook; George Street in the rain, double-page spread in the Forum cafe, Remembrance day in Victoria Park, and Christmas shoppers in Milsom Street. Then a fude pen portrait of our neighbour Denis, done at his request for his wife who’s recently moved into a care home.
Vacance
Sorry for the absence… Here are some sketches from a trip to Southern France in various media with watercolour washes. A sunny morning at Girona airport (drawn in brush-pen), pure watercolour studies of a mountain in the Eastern Pyrenees, looking towards Canigou over the rooftops of Perpignan (more brush-pen drawing), a VeloSolex 800 in Sharpie, and a baking hot afternoon in Collioure (bamboo dip-pen). And now back in soggy grey Bath (more dip-pen)….
Posted in airplane, airport, Bath, France, rooftops, travel, urban, urban sketching, vehicles
Tagged airport sketch, bamboo dip pen, Canigou, Collioure, Hot Butter, moped sketch, Perpignan, urban sketching, watercolour mountain sketches
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Small sketch notes
I love using the big square wood-bound sketch-book with bamboo dip-pen, but it doesn’t work for an everyday carry. So I’ve been carrying a much much smaller notebook (£1 from Muji) for daily sketches. It’s shirt-pocket sized and works really well with a fude pen and tiny watercolour kit. The paper buckles a bit with paint, but the drawings are looser as they’re so small and brief. It also allows me to sketch very discreetly, catching more of the passing human parade! Here’s a selection of recent gleanings from around town, including a hot-air balloon take-off, a baby on a bus and several sleepy commuters…
“…through the square window”
Apologies for the lack of recent blog posts; we’ve welcomed a Schnoodle puppy into our home and posting on Facebook better suits my sleep-deprived attention span… But I have managed to make a new batch of sketchbooks; they’re still bound in super-light plywood, and are even bigger than previous versions (they don’t fit on the scanner, hence the oddly lit sketches below…), and they’re now square. Instagram abandoned the square a couple of years ago but I’m enjoying working inside this new shape after years of using the usual rectangle. The square echoes Polaroids, and my first experience of photography using a Kodak Instamatic; it also means one less choice to resolve before getting down to sketching (landscape? portrait? nope). I’m finding the square a more ‘democratic’ shape for composition, it encourages me to use the full frame, and also seems to lead to wider angle vision. But I was leaning towards these approaches anyway, and maybe the increased size of the page is what matters, so who knows?! Here’s a set of recent square sketches, all in bamboo dip-pen (another decision already made before I settle to drawing); let me know if you spot any patterns. They’re certainly easier to arrange in a grid…
I’ve also been looking for discussions about the reasons for choices between landscape/portrait/square formats in drawing/sketching/art and couldn’t find much. There were a few articles related to the ‘golden section’, and some on photography, focussing (ho ho) on sensor shapes etc. These led to interesting descriptions of the human visual field and how we perceive the space around us. Plenty to ponder…
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 group who’s visiting the UK), and local sketcher Jim (who shares his artistic explorations and discoveries here). It was raining, again, so we sheltered in the Abbey and settled to sketch for an hour in our various ways…
I sat right at the back and focussed on drawing the many visitors, who were draped over, leaning on, and sitting in the pews. I was using a bamboo dip-pen in a large sketchbook, looking for the key expressive lines that described the figures as simply and speedily as possible. I added the colour when I got home, and the overall effect is ‘cartoony’; Jim thought so too and later added some speech bubbles…
Jim also drew figures, but used pencil in a small Moleskine. He worked on capturing tone alongside the more subtle shapes and structural lines. Jim’s sketches are careful studies that also carry enough information to inform future works; I think they reflect the time he has spent researching and experimenting with technical aspects of drawing and painting.
Gary focussed on the building, capturing the height and light of the interior space. He used very light pencil to plan the composition, then worked confidently in watercolour, followed by black pen to build and focus the darker elements of the sketch; the complete opposite to my usual sequence (ink lines, then paint). Figures appear as outlines framing white space, giving scale but allowing the building to speak for itself.
I love seeing how other people sketch the world, and hope I can continue to learn by enjoying the diverse results, both online and in person. Thanks to Gary and Jim for a great afternoon!
Mostly drawing 