Urban Sketchers

Mary Star of the Sea Church, La Jolla California

noreply@blogger.com (Urban Sketchers San Diego) — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:04:00 +0000

San Diego Urban Sketchers meet at Mary Star of the Sea Church to Paint and sketch.

Jackmy sketch

part of the church

Green Lantern

noreply@blogger.com (kane) — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:14:00 +0000

This is my 12th and final drawing for the Jogyesa Buddhist Temple 2014 calendar. At certain times of the year, they string up thousands of colored lanterns around the Temple. Right next to the Temple is a very large old tree. People walk around it with their hand outstretched touching the tree as they circle it. There is a slight wearing down of the bark in that area around the tree. It's a very tall tree. From a high vantage point, you can see the rows of lanterns and then magically, a giant tree growing out of the top of them. At night, the lanterns are lit up. It's quite something. I'd like to thank everyone who came to my Etsy shop and bought prints and originals from me. They're going like hot cakes.

Sketching Ancient History

noreply@blogger.com (szaza) — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:26:00 +0000

On May 10th, I hopped on a plane from Istanbul to Şanlıurfa, a city in Southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. PeF and I joined a group of Turkish artists called karala(ma), who were invited by Harran University to sketch Şanlıurfa— or Urfa, as the city is commonly called. The highlight of the trip was a visit to Göbeklitepe, a Neolithic sanctuary built by nomads around 10,000 BCE. The sanctuary is a series of circular arrangements of T-shaped pillars, which vary from 3 to 6 metres high. It is believed that the T-pillars are stylised representations of the human form, as some have reliefs of arms carved into them. What I found most intriguing were the beautifully rendered animals— foxes, boar, birds, and other animals were carefully carved into the faces of the pillars, some with great detail. Göbeklitepe is the oldest example of a religious site ever found, and its complexity is baffling.

I thought I'd add two photos of the sketching event at this important historic site— it was such an honour to be invited by Harran University and karala(ma).

Me, Orhan Zafer and Ayşegül Güvenir, founders of the Turkish artist group karala(ma)

From left to right: I did not catch this lovely lady's name, Orhan, Nur, Turkish archaeologist Mehmet Önay,
Aysel, Ayşegül, Ayşe, Ayla, PeF and me.

If you'd like to read more about my adventure in Şanlıurfa, and see some of the photos and sketches I made along the way, please visit my blog Harika.

Flea market

noreply@blogger.com (jen) — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:10:00 +0000

Flea market in Frankfurt, quick sketch on the smartphone while watching the sellers pack up.

Reading and riding in Spanish again.

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon Frost) — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:08:00 +0000

Weekends in Brooklyn (and Queens and the Bronx) are always an adventure: track work time. Going from one part (Windsor Terrace) to another part (Greenpoint) of the big borough of Brooklyn can mean 3 line changes, 4 trains. This ride saw a broken G train: into two legs. The Bolaño quote reads in English: At first sight it seemed the same as always, better even, more animated.

My studio is big enough to be multi-purpose: not just art making, but also reading, Spanish study, yoga. I love to merge the art and the Spanish. I think of them both as languages within which I'm working on fluency. It's so much easier to read in Spanish on Kindle, where you can work with an interactive dictionary. Qué pena that some of my favorite authors aren't yet available in that format! The Muñoz Molina quote: wandering among things impelled by the impossible task of speeding up time.
Sketchblog: DayBooks

'The Love Box' ?

noreply@blogger.com (miked) — Tue, 21 May 2013 02:01:00 +0000

Last week was spent on a business trip working at a trade show booth in Las Vegas.
I've been there numerous times both on business and on pleasure trips and still can't get over how surreal the place is.
Although I was really tired from working everyday, I still had to get the room sketch out of the way before I could really rest. After 8 years of drawing every hotel room I stayed in, it's almost engraved in me to get the sketch done. It does feel good after completing it though.

Out of the items that stood out in the room, 'The love box' was a small black box on sale along with other things such as snacks and drinks. I was curious on what was inside but was scared to touch it since all these items on display were on a weight sensor and touching it causes the item to be charged to the room.
The room was a little dated but was fairly nice.

Pune, India

noreply@blogger.com (omar) — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:36:00 +0000

One of the great things travelling abroad is the possibility to meet other sketchers. When I knew I was going to Mumbai I decided immediately to visit USk correspondent Sanjeev Joshi. He lives in Pune, only 4 hours from Mumbay what for India is quite a short distance. Pune has an important industrial sector and is also know for its Ashrams.

Sanjeev was an awesome host. He invited Michael and me for a dinner at his home, where we met his lovely wife. We got one of the best meals in the trip. The next day he took us to a very peaceful temple courtyard in the middle of a very busy market area. I think this is one of the places you can only know if you are a local.

Sanjeev paints some pages of his sketchbooks before he gets out sketching. The shapes he makes are very interesting. He uses some calligraphic tools for that. I made a picture of it but I lost that image when my cell phone broke.

Above is Sanjeev's drawing.

And below is my watercolor:

Sanjeev also took us to the studio of the paitnter Milind Mulick. I will write a post about him and his work next but meanwhile you could take a pick at the link above.

Thanks to Michael Evgi for the pictures, and thanks Sanjeev for showing us Pune!

The Denver Public Library

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Heaston) — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:03:00 +0000

After having lived here a year I finally got around to getting my Denver Public Library Card. And lately, since I got my first Stillman and Birn sketchbook I can't stop sketching in and around the library.

The part of the Denver Public Library in this sketch was designed by Michael Graves and built in 1995 as an addition to a much smaller original portion that can't be seen on the other side of this building. It shares a large plaza with the Denver Art Museum, and it's a great place to sketch and people-watch.

Inside the large round area are several floors of great spaces to draw.
The reference area, on the third floor:

The 5th floor Western History and Genealogy Dept has this beautiful wooden "oil derrick" in the middle of the room.

and this other nice, open reading space:

And the views of downtown Denver are fantastic.

by Paul Heaston

Line-line Journey III: Kaohsiung (Part II)

noreply@blogger.com (Ch'ng Kiah Kiean) — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:19:00 +0000

高雄港口眺望
Size: 28 x 56 cm
Media: Chinese ink & watercolour on paper

鳳邑雙慈宮 Size: 28 x 56 cm
Media: Chinese ink & watercolour on paper

橋頭糖廠
Size: 19 x 56 cm
Media: Chinese ink & watercolour on paper

橋糖文創園區
Size: 19 x 56 cm
Media: Chinese ink & watercolour on paper

鳳山火車站
Size: 19 x 56 cm
Media: Chinese ink & watercolour on paper

Another set of colour sketches done during Line-line Journey III travel + exhibition.

Do you mind some shop talk? Some tips on composition :)

noreply@blogger.com (marctaro) — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:33:00 +0000

Looking back, I thought this page from the other week was a good example in a few ways.

Here's what I was actually looking at.

Kind of a good example what they mean by 'simplification' hey? They keep telling you to do that - simplify. But what does it really mean? Creating Focus. Leaving out whatever is in the way of that single thing that drew your eye.

Clearly, I don't want the truck in my sketch :) that's easy. But also I see immediately that the yellow awning and cafe below it is the interesting part of this view. Not the people setting up their booth. Not the larger building, but the smaller one.

So even in the drawing, you can see the focus being created with composition. Leaving out most of the blue building, but using it to be a big directional arrow pointing to the subject. Clustering all the detail - all the little active shapes - under the awning. Leaving out distractions - even tho' I love lamp-posts and foreground trees! It was hard to force myself to leave that stuff out.

I like to say to students - "spend half the time on the drawing. and half on the paint". People never want to do that. They want to get right to the color! But if you delay your gratification, you'll be much happier. See how the shadow shapes in the roof-line are sketched in the drawing? The design is solved before I go to color. It's great to be able to put aside the design thinking - so when you're painting, you can just paint. The work is done, so you can play with the color.

So, this is the first pass - the wet-in-wet wash. This is what they mean, 'work larger to smaller'. Only the big blocks of color. This also is when you let the watercolor mingle naturally. This is why you're not oil painting. Watercolor should be allowed to do it's magic thing. Take advantage of the physics of water.

Then finally, after an hour or more of delaying gratification - you get to draw the details! Maybe it's just me - but it's the detail that I love. I really want to just start noodling immediately with tiny tiny shapes. But if you do that, you'll lose the 'life' - the freshness that make a sketch appealing.

These smaller shadows, and dark darks are when I start painting wet-on-dry - so I can get a sharp edge when I want it. (Window panes!) And I'm using less water, more paint, so my shadows have solidity.

The eye loves three things - contrast, chroma (intense color) and detail. If they are not kept in the same place - the eye will wander - seeking information and entertainment. A tight composition keeps the darkest darks, the smallest details, and the brightens colors in the same place. The focal point.

See how each window gets progressively more interesting as you work left to right, then down to the bright awning, until suddenly you're walking into a nice cafe! Looks like a great place for lunch :)

I like to call this the "Gradient of Interest". All the elements working together to lead the eye.

Red Truck

noreply@blogger.com (miked) — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:04:00 +0000

My trusty Sailor Fude de Mannen Fountain pen (http://flic.kr/p/cmtQBG) I had out on repair for over a month finally came back home. It was a rough month without it but I made it through using other pens in between. I drew one of my favorite subjects once it came back - a heavy duty truck.

San Diego Urban Sketchers Meet Up at Old Poway Park

noreply@blogger.com (Urban Sketchers San Diego) — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:28:00 +0000

Jack, Lydia and Dominique

Dominique

Lydia

Jack

Lisbon

noreply@blogger.com (João Catarino) — Sun, 19 May 2013 11:14:00 +0000

Are the billboards advertising an obstruction of the visual landscape? The drawing can return to town the missing part of a view. This was my proposed in a billboards artistic circuit in Lisbon.

Hot Air Balloons and Vintage Cars

noreply@blogger.com (Suhita) — Sun, 19 May 2013 01:10:00 +0000

Getting my family up and out of the house on a Saturday morning is like pulling teeth. But today was an exception. Nobody complained about the 7am wake up call to go up on hot air balloon and helicopter rides at the Wings of History Museum, a little volunteer run airplane museum and restoration center in San Martin, California.

I sketched while we stood in line for our tethered balloon ride.

We met a balloon pilot who comes down to volunteer all the way from South Dakota every year, and watched as a volunteer crew helped hold down the basket and tethers to load and unload people after their rides.

My daughter was old enough to go up in a helicopter ride ( free, just like the balloon rides) but my son was not, so he and I hung out and looked around at the vintage cars while she was on her ride. Here are a couple of cars from our morning.

More sketches and stories from my morning excursion on my blog and a complete set on flickr.

Hikichidai Park sketching

noreply@blogger.com (kumi matsukawa) — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:48:00 +0000

My watercolor class students and I had sketch outing to Hikichidai Park, Kanagawa prefecture twice this month.
I brought different sketchbooks and different brand's watercolor sets each time. I applied different technics. Am I too capricious? I'm still experimenting and I keep asking myself what is my style...

I minimized my brush strokes and added details using black of pen and white correction fluid.

For this one, I had no intention to depict reality, rather my priority was to explain what's going on there using minimized color and strokes because I was standing and carrying heavy bags..

I wanted to depict more in detail with pencil lines but pencil lead made the drawing a bit too grayish...

This one, I took more time and I observed much carefully.

The half right was almost finished and the half left wasn't. It wasn't on purpose, just the matter of time, I just gave up further drawing.

Comic style

noreply@blogger.com (matthew_c) — Sat, 18 May 2013 06:59:00 +0000

Victoria - red fish blue fish - lining up for seafood, originally uploaded by Matthew-1.

I drew this with a selection of grey pitt pens I won in a draw around Christmas.
I like the way this turned out in what I call a "comic book style". It feels like a page from a story somehow...
I saw an exhibit of Art Spiegelman's work recently at the Vancouver Art Gallery (he won a pulitzer prize for his illustrated novel "Maus"), which included a lot of "comic" style drawings. It's actually a very mature medium now and I like it more and more.

Crossfit Regionals, Del Mar, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Urban Sketchers San Diego) — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:37:00 +0000

An out of town friend was in Del Mar today attending the Crossfit Regionals. While she was performing her volunteer duties I got to sketch!

ice 1608

noreply@blogger.com (Rolf Schröter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:18:00 +0000

leipzig > berlin

comfort = seat + no network connection

| rolf schröter

Zzzzzzzzz.....

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne the Pencil) — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Drawing on the train again, this time coming back from a school visit in Selby:

On the way there first thing, my train was cancelled and the train company put me in a replacement taxi instead. I didn't dare draw the other 5 people crammed in with me - a bit too obvious even for me!

Montclar State University

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Gardner) — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:25:00 +0000

My Last class at Montclair afforded me the opportunity to sit a draw, a stolen moment, if you will. It's a beautiful campus, I'm already looking forward to being back in the fall.

Line-line Journey III: Kaohsiung

noreply@blogger.com (Ch'ng Kiah Kiean) — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:44:00 +0000

高雄港口淺水碼頭

旗後砲台

莒光街路口

蓮池潭龍虎塔

打狗英國領事館

武德殿

All sketches:
Size: 19 x 56 cm
Media: Chinese ink on paper

I visited Kaohsiung, Taiwan last month to sketch that beautiful city and had my solo exhibition Line-line Journey III after that. I spend about a week there for sketching and have the exhibition immediately after that, its a challenge for me.

Wine and sekt in the Park

noreply@blogger.com (omar) — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:30:00 +0000

A very German thing is the Biergarten. It is basically a place with tables and benches where people seat to drink some bier. However in this case they serve wine and sekt from the German region of Rheingau-Taunus. You can buy the wine and sekt in the shed in the back. On the top, in a green board with golden letters in old German typography you can read the name of the establishment: Rheingauer Weinbrunnen. Here in this park in Rudelsheimer Platz in Berlin you can even bring your own food.

Many people also order pizzas from the Italian restaurant in the other side of the road. On sunny days like today you can see the restaurant waiter crossing the road with pizzas many times.

Drawing Attention: Round the World Sketching News

noreply@blogger.com (Urban Sketchers) — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:54:00 +0000

1st Annual West Coast USK Sketchcrawl

This three-day sketching event is planned for any and all Urban Sketchers who, for whatever reasons, cannot make it to the International Urban Sketching Symposium in Barcelona this summer. It is scheduled to run from July 12 - 14, 2013 in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. We will be sketching in the birth place of the "World Wide Sketchcrawl," San Francisco, for the "40th World Wide Sketchcrawl" on June 13th. For info: 1st Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers' Sketchcrawl blog and Facebook page.

Sketching the Urban Landscape

Urban Sketchers Correspondent Matthew Cencich (Victoria, BC, Canada), as well as urban sketchers Sigrid Albert and Dave Huggard presented a workshop, "Sketching the Urban Landscape", at the British Columbia Society of Landscape Architects annual conference in Vancouver, BC at the end of April.

Sketches at right are from a conference mobile tour.

Magazines Feature Urban Sketchers

In the June 2013 issue of Watercolor Artist, seven watercolor artists, members of the international organization Urban Sketchers, share their on-site watercolor cityscapes created all around the world. Their globe-trotting art includes city scenes from locales such as New York, Paris, Santo Domingo and Singapore. Plus: the artists share their tried-and-true tips for creating on the go. The article features the work and words of a number of USK correspondents, including Cathy Johnson (Kansas City, USA), USK founder Gabriel Campanario (Seattle, WA), Tia Boon Sim (Singapore), Laura Frankstone (Chapel Hill, NC, USA), Marc Taro Holmes (Montreal, Canada), Liz Steel (Sydney, Australia), and Nina Johansson (Stockholm, Sweden - whose sketch is shown on the left), as well as Marcia Milner-Brage of Urban Sketchers Midwest.

“I like to paint in bars during the day. Only during the daylight do bars reveal themselves. Sometimes people want to talk about what I’m doing, and nothing gets done. Some days the art wins; other days, the bar.” So said USK Correspondent Stephen Gardner (New York City) when featured as part of the article, ‘This is Who Rules the Bars of New York” in the April 4, 2013 issue of The New York Times Magazine (photo, left). Stephen was one of nine people highlighted as being a bar regular with a particular specialty, in his case, sketching.

An article by Tina Koyama, a Seattle Urban Sketcher and freelance writer in Seattle, Washington, was published in the Summer 2013 issue of Studios magazine. The article, "Studio in a Bag" (photo, right,) is about her daily sketch bag – her “portable studio” – and how it’s essential to urban sketching.

Urban Sketching Hits the Commercial World

USK Correspondent lapin (Barcelona, Spain) brought urban sketching to a recent project for Aigle. Sketches formed the basis for illustrations in their Spring/Summer lookbook, store windows in Stockholm, Corse and Lisboa (photo, left), and even the store restoration construction sites at the company’s concept store in the heart of Paris. Info here.

Do you have urban sketching news to share in Drawing Attention? Please send fully written items with links (and graphics, if possible) to: drawingattention at urbansketchers dot org

Until next month...happy sketching,
Lisbeth Cort, member of Whidbey Island Sketchers
drawingattention at urbansketchers dot org

Lisbon pigeons

noreply@blogger.com (João Catarino) — Wed, 15 May 2013 23:42:00 +0000

Can Lisbon pigeons be colored? Yes if we dare to draw!

Avenida Itaquera

noreply@blogger.com (joão pinheiro) — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:21:00 +0000