sketchcrawl

Attended my first ever sketchcrawl - the 4th annual West Coast Scketchcrawl in Tacoma, WA this year. I was only able to attend one session, but it was SO fun seeing all those sketchers spread out over the city (over 100 sketchers from southern CA to Vancouver BC). My 2 hours of sketching yielded these two:

drawn w/ fountain pen in Stillman & Birn Alpha 9x6

drawn w/ fountain pen in Stillman Birn Alpha 9x6 (over the gutter)

both drawn in Canson mixed media notebook w/ ink & watercolor

The 2 above are from our  recent camping trip to Salt Creek near Pt. Angeles,WA. Relaxing & fun but too cold to call it a perfect trip.

urban sketching 3

Another Georgetown area in-person sketch. This is the Georgetown City Hall - I remembered this building from exploring the area years ago and wanted to give it a try. Perhaps too much perspective stuff going on to get it quite right, but......

Pencil sketch - about 45 minutes .....till I got too cold.

Watercolor added - the side columns are not really so gold - I need to work on my color mixing (sheesh, yet another thing to work on!).  The circle areas are problem angles that I'm asking my Craftsy instructor about. - In looking at the photo I realize I totally didn't notice the steps to the front door when I was there - I guess that's the "in the moment" stuff - more the impression than the exact replication - that would be a photo, wouldn't it?  I obviously simplified it a bit by leaving out all the signs and lightpost, but should have put in some greenery to anchor it.  Well - still learning.

A photo for reference/memory.

This is a challenging path for me but I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far - in spite of the frustrations. Thanks for checking in to see what I'm up to....

added color

decided to add color from memory with Inktense

I like it better......

urban sketching

Since I'm just starting my sketching journey, I bought a couple of Craftsy sketching classes:  Marc Taro Holmes teaches Travel Sketching in Mixed Media, Perspective for Sketchers by Stephanie Bower (a Seattlite), and Sketching the City in Pen, Ink and Watercolor by Shari Blaukopf.  I can highly recommend all 3 classes -  Absorbing the classes and exploring the internet for urban sketching has been a revelation.

For those who don't know, urban sketching is an international movement to sketch where you live and find beauty in your neighborhoods.  Sketching is supposed to be done only on-site, not from a photo or memory - you can use any medium and any subject as long as it's in the context of what's going on around it.

So after a little bit of practice from photos using some of the techniques picked up from the classes, I decided I wanted to try an urban sketch - something done on-site, in person.  Was it going to be easier or harder in person rather than from a photo?

I stopped on my way home from work to sketch this neighborhood bar (in Georgetown).  Of course, I wanted to pick a somewhat easy building to start with - still screwed up the perspective and had to kind of scribble correct the top, but overall I'm pleased with my efforts.  And, it was fun!  I can tell I'm definitely going to have to do some work on cars .... these look very cartoony and there's something weird about the perspective. And, since cars are all over the urban landscape, I'll have to figure it out.  Onward and upward!

a few more sketches

I'm enjoying looking through pictures I took in Paris to now turn into sketches.  

Here's a more complex attempt - the Paris Opera House, which I actually didn't see; Dan took this photo.

My humble attempt..........starting to include darks and some shadows (ala Marc Taro Holmes sketching video series)

This one was a quicker sketch with the idea of hinting at the row of fall trees some with no leaves and some with fall color.  That's a row of parked cars on the right.....obviously need to work on that!  :) Color again added with Inktense.  Will graduate to watercolor sometime soon.

sketching 2

Sketching an elevation view (ala Stephanie Bower) using info from her Craftsy perspective drawing video course (on sale right now). I added color with my inktense pencils & a water brush.

Source photo I took on one of our neighborhood streets:

Stephanie is based here in Seattle, so I'm thinking I might try taking one of her classes in person - could be fun (if I can get over my insecurities!).   Meanwhile I'll continue practicing using the tips in her video course.