Capturing the Crowd (with James Richards)

August 16, 2016August 16, 20164 Comments

The second workshop I attended at the 7th Urban Sketching Sympo – er,”USKManchester2016″, let’s just call it (that’s the official hashtag by the way, #uskmanchester2016, if you happen to be on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, MySpace, well maybe not MySpace, anyway all those so-called media sites (that is the term right?), just use that hashtag and you will find everyone else’s Symposium stuff. It’s pretty damn wicked.) Sorry, just interrupted a sentence to shorten it with a longer sentence. Ok. The second workshop I took in Manchester was called “Capturing the Crowd“, taught by James Richards, assisted by his wife Patti, and held up at Albert Square (no, not that Albert Square, a real and much better one).

Jim is an excellent teacher who went through everything step by step, how to construct a scene with a crowd of people in it, tips on detail and colour, tricks for poses and perspective. I’d not met him in person before so it was a real treat to learn from this master, especially as I have been trying more and more to add crowds of people into my location drawings. The only thing we didn’t really have was a crowd – that afternoon was pretty rainy (hello Manchester!) – but that wasn’t a problem. People were always walking past, and if you draw enough of them, then voila – you have a crowd!

There is Jim on the right there, I managed a very quick sketch while he was going over the mechanics, as it were. He was extremely well prepared. Now I won’t go over every aspect of what he taught us, but if you pop over to Jim’s website, he has put together a thorough step-by-step demo.

Here are the first quick sketches I did in the workshop, just rapid sketches of people as they passed by, working on poses and using people to create perspective. The final drawing I did is at the top – I stuck around the finish it after the workshop had ended. The rain didn’t last all afternoon, though I stood beneath an arch. I did bump into former USk London sketcher and animator Nathan Brenville, who was visiting family in the north (he now lives in Madrid). He has a colouring-in book coming out soon which is all about Maggie Thatcher!

Capturing the crowd sketches sm

Key points I took away:

Go with the basic eye-level as the point to draw the heads in your crowd – the bodies will shorten as they get further away
Only the front ‘row’ of people need to have details – beyond that, simple people shapes – and bring some people right up close in your sketch, to add to the depth
Legs overlap a lot so many figures walking towards or away from you will appear to have one long ‘upside-down-triangular’ leg
Add a few different colours to peoples’ clothes – even if all the ‘real’ people seem to be wearing shades of grey, a few bolder colours will make all the difference
Yeah Manchester really does like to rain
I should look at a map and not just use the force*

Cheers Jim! Check out more of his lovely work at www.jamesrichardssketchbook.com/

*Ahem. After this I was supposed to meet up with other sketchers at the Peveril of the Peak pub, but I totally got lost TWICE. Even after being given directions. I made it eventually…

Cars in the City (with Lapin and Gerard Michel)

August 15, 2016August 15, 20166 Comments

The 7th International Urban Sketching Symposium kicked off on the Wednesday evening with a big gathering at Manchester Town Hall in a huge, wonderful room that was not unlike the Great Hall at Hogwarts, but more ornate and elaborate. I didn’t however take any photos or do any sketching, busy as I was meeting with old friends and chatting away. I did got for dinner afterwards and sketched there but I will post all the ‘dinnertime’ sketches separately I think. I’d like now to dive into the Symposium itself – above is a quick sketch I did of the first morning introduction session, with Simone Ridyard, Elizabeth Alley and Omar Jaramillo there. It was time to go and sketch, and my first workshop was one I was really looking forward to: “Cars in the City“, with Lapin and Gerard Michel.

Yes indeed. I’ve known Lapin and Gerard since the first Symposium (though have followed their work since the start of Urban Sketchers), both have very different approaches but have a big love of drawing cars, especially classic vehicles. This workshop of course was originally to be co-taught with Florian Afflerbach, the great sketcher of cars who sadly passed away earlier this year. I took a workshop Gerard and Florian co-taught in Lisbon, teaching me a lot about perspective. While this workshop was not necessarily about large scenes and mastering vanishing points, the workshop did focus very much on how the eye perceives the world based on our distance from what we are sketching, and Lapin and Gerard did a good job of showing us what they mean.

Our first assignment was to sketch a car from a distance of about a metre or so, maybe a little more. The view of the car would be more typical, and they gave us an example of how to work out the shape using simple boxes. My first car happened to be a Mercedes, and I drew in pencil (thinking again of Florian), keeping a little way back from the car, crouched, as it looked very much like it might rain. Oh and by the way it certainly did rain.

So we found a car-park not too far away which was sheltered beneath an overpass, and sketched in there. Lapin asked us to sit very close to the car we wanted to sketch – the closer you sit, the more warped the perspective would start to look. This is a good rule for perspective – you position matters enormously, and even slight changes to your position can alter the perspective of what you are drawing immensely. I found a blue Ford Focus – hardly a beautiful car but still attractive for the sketch’s purpose. I drew my reflection in it and also changed the number plate to something more fitting the Symposium. Lapin came and said, sit even closer! I was pretty close, but still two feet or so out – he suggested going right up to the car, and seeing what happened. His suggestion to the class was that we don’t think about perspective rules, rather, just see what is in front of you as a series of shapes, and draw the shapes, letting the picture unfold itself. For my next car then I chose a Rover 400 (below), a more classic British brand, and sat right up to the headlight.

Well I think you can see the difference! Immediately everything bends that bit more, yet the sketch really starts to pop out. This is something I would like to try a bit more. We ran out of time before I could add colour, and we had a little gathering to discuss what we had learned, but the parking attendant in charge of the car-park came along and booted us out; I guess the car park is private property, but it was good shelter from the rain. We moved along to a spot around the corner for the final part of the workshop, drawing cars with the city around them. This was very much Gerard’s part of the class and he showed us some examples; including the cars in the foreground of the sketches helped to add depth but also some foreground anchor to help understand the perspective of the scene. there was a nice spot away from the rain next to an office block, showing a clear view of Manchester’s skyline (thanks to a building having been demolished, I believe it was something to do with the BBC). We did go into the building and ask permission to sit beneath it and sketch, and they were fine with it. It was a very interesting view, with the Palace Hotel there, but oh so rainy.

Key points I took away:

Your perspective of an object curves dramatically as you get closer to it
Use box shapes often helps figure out the car’s overall shape
Draw the scene as the shapes you see and the perspective often figures itself out
Manchester really is quite rainy

Many thanks to Lapin and to Gerard! Awesome instructors!

de vere’s from left to right

August 13, 2016August 13, 20161 Comment

Actually, before we get back to Manchester, here is a sketch I did last weekend right here in Davis. Click on it for a closer view. This is De Vere’s Irish Pub on E Street, which eagle eyed observers will have noticed I have sketched before. I did some thinking about the old curvilinear perspective recently, and how I need to really get it into the sketches more. I do anyway, of course, but I haven’t been doing many where I get both the left and right vanishing point into the picture, so that’s what I did here. I needed to practice it again somewhere familiar, so it was back to the very middle of the bar, similar to the first time, back in 2011. I coloured the page first in a red and orange wash, for some reason, meaning I ended up with a peach coloured background. This took about two and a half hours, or three pints of Smithwicks. It was strange not to be sketching at a bar where every single other person was also sketching (like the Peveril of the Peak!). I had just been to see Suicide Squad, which was, well it was better than Batman v Superman, for sure. A terrible plotline with a lot of problems, but overall not an unwatchable movie, and both Will Smith as Deadshot and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn were good. Jay Leno as the Joker was very different from the other Jokers, not awful but the jury is out for many, though I am well impressed at how different Jay Leno looks from his cuddly talk show persona. I do like the post-movie pub-sketch, with all the sketching ideas bubbling around my head from Manchester sometimes you just need to unwind and get them out. The first few days back my sketching was a bit of a choke but with this and others since I have kicked back into gear, and now I’m heading towards my sketchbook show at UC Davis this Fall, “Conversations with the City”. Details to come soon!

Mancunian Street Sketchers

August 11, 20161 Comment

Two weeks ago, I attended the 7th Urban Sketching Symposium in Manchester, in the north of England. I went as a “Workshop Pass Holder”, which is the full access pass, though of course there are so many workshops and activities there is really only time to do a few, but I certainly packed a lot in. I had never been to Manchester before, and had no idea what to expect. It was pretty awesome actually, lots of sketchable buildings, lots of old pubs, and yes, it rained almost every day. Well you’re not doing Manchester properly if you don’t get rained on a bit.

When I first arrived, I checked into my apartment at the Atrium on Princess Street, did a bit of shopping at Sainsburys Local,and then sketched the magnificent Palace Hotel, above. I had intended on colouring it in but when I was finally done, I preferred it like this. Also, I needed to go and check in at the Symposium venue, the Manchester School of Art. I enjoyed sketching this; I stood beside a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses and I chatted to one of them, a nice chap who told me about his passion for photography, but that he hadn’t done any drawing in quite a while. I told him that Manchester was about to be flooded with hundreds of people out drawing the streets, sketchers from all over the world. As yet I had not seen a single one, but as I thought about that, I bumped into Vincent Desplanche, a prolific French sketcher who I met last year in Strasbourg. I stood with him and sketched the Oxford Road station and this curving picture house on the corner of the street. I was moved by the words on the sign which read, “Thanks for 30 years…see you at home.” To see old cinemas closing down like this, beloved old buildings falling into disuse by the swift steely march of modern times, and with that big crane in the background, and the touching, sad sentiment of “see you at home” obviously being some reference to the fact people don’t go and watch films any more, they stream them all nowadays, sitting on their armchairs and microwaving popcorn, where is the community, where is the shared cultural experience, oh then someone pointed out to me that “home” meant “HOME”, not “home”. “HOME” is a big new arts, theatre and film complex just down the street, and I guess the cinema was just moving there. Well. Now I know. So much for my poignant image, people streaming by on their way “home”.

Here is a map I added to my sketchbook. I will be documenting my time at the Symposium in a less ‘chronological’ and more ‘themed’ type of way, with a post for each of the workshops I attended, including what I learnt and a bit about the instructor, as well as the social gatherings, sketches of pubs, and other miscellany. I will probably post these all over the next week or so, but will also be posting current sketches as well. Oh, and the football season is about to begin so expect some new football kit posts too. I’ll also do a couple of posts about the exciting upcoming projects coming from me this Fall. I will also ramble on about some nonsense you don’t care about, make a few terrible puns, and explain why proper north-of-England chips in gravy is the best food ever.

round our way the sun shines for ya

August 10, 2016August 10, 20162 Comments

Before I dive into the Manchester posting I thought I would jump back to the present day (Manchester was like less than two weeks ago) and show you some of what I’ve been doing since I got back. Here is Davis Community Church, on 4th Street, sketched while squeezing the curving perspective lines to fit the image in. In truth I wasn’t actually squeezing them – this is how they looked from where I was standing. As you get closer to a building those parallel perspective lines to curve more. I have wanted to redraw this building for a long time so this was a fun way to do so; after taking Paul Heaston’s workshop in Manchester I realized I need to squeeze in those perspectives even more, to get the bigger picture. I had just gotten my hair cut (finally! it was too long while I was in Manchester, too long for me) and the weather was hot but not bad. My body was aching and tired still after my trip back, my back being still a bit stuff from the cramped journey across the Atlantic. Although I complain there’s nothing left for me to draw in Davis, it’s still nice getting back to the old familiar streets.

Dinosaurs at Knebworth

August 10, 2016August 10, 2016Leave a comment

While in England, I went with my Mum, my sister Lauren and my nephew Sonny to the grounds of Knebworth House, in Hertfordshire. I had never been before. It’s very nice. There is a maze, and some incredible wooden goblins and fairies and things carved into tree stumps. You would like it. We never went into the house itself though.

What I liked most though were the dinosaurs. The Dinosaur Trail winds through some of the woodland area, and those dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts are in some cases enormous. There are 70 of them in total, and so my nephew and I started to draw them. Here he is below, sketching a Scolosaurus. He did a lot more drawings than me – the speed of youth, eh! – but I sketched a few of my old favourites. On the left there is a Corythosaurus, which I didn’t colour in. I used to have a model of a Corythosaurus when I was a kid, I remember gluing it all together, and I loved it. I really loved dinosaurs. My son for example thinks they’re ok, but whenever we go to the Natural History Museum he is usually more interested in rocks and geology, that is his passion. When I was little, it was all about those dinos, man. I still have some of my old dinosaur books, with their out-of-date depictions and dramatic paintings. One of them was an Elasmosaurus, which they did have a model of at Knebworth, but I sadly did not draw. Those things were terrifying. Below though, probably my favourite dinosaur, the Styracosaurus. Any animal that can have that many spikes on its head is a friend to me. It looks like Keith from the Prodigy. It’s a total fantasy creature.

Below, the old lovable Triceratops. The original king of the Ceratopsians. My horns face forward, laughing boy, so don’t get cocky or you’ll find yourself turned into a Tyrannosaurus Kebab! They both have those big parrot-like beaks. Hey I tell you who does know a lot (and I mean a lot) about dinosaurs is the fellow who made an appearance in my last post, Paul Heaston. He once even made an amazing model of a feathered Deinonychus (another of my favourite dinosaurs). Here is an interview with him from 2012 on the fantastically-named website “Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs“. Up in Manchester, another dinosaur-loving artist Lapin mentioned to his “Cars in the City” workshop (images posted soon) that all sketchbooks should contain a car…and at least one dinosaur. I agree. DINOSAURS RULE!

Incidentally, today happens to be 20 years to the day that Oasis played their massive enormous gig at Knebworth. I never went to that myself (I never did see Oasis live, though a massive fan – I saw the Sex Pistols at Finsbury Park in ’96 and it was great but totally did me in for big music crowds). Lots of old rock bands played Knebworth over the years, the Rolling Stones, Led Zep, Genesis, and above are some drawings of some other old dinosaurs.

down the grafton with james and paul

August 9, 2016Leave a comment

On the Monday I was back in London, I took my Mum to afternoon tea at Fortnum and Mason’s (always fun), and in the evening I went down to the Camden area to meet up with my good friend James, and my fellow urban sketcher Paul Heaston. It was actually the first time I had ever met Paul in person, having followed him for the best part of a decade online since the early days on Flickr and Urban Sketchers, always been one of my sketching heroes (and a fellow ginger sketcher). So it was great to finally meet him, and he is a super nice dude as well. It turns out he loves the Beatles as much as James and I do, so there was a lot of music talk. We went down to the Grafton Arms in Kentish Town and sketched in there, silly jokes ahoy, and Paul showed us his remarkable sketchbook, full of extremely accurate curving perspectives and highly detailed interiors. Blown away and inspired in equal measure. I sketched the above scene, and also drew my companions (below). A fun evening out in north London.

And here are a couple of action photos, the first sowing Paul’s great skills of fitting everything in, the second showing me with that thing I apparently do when I am drawing, poking my tongue out. My son does that when he plays soccer so it must be a Scully thing.

Oh, and James and I did our Panini football sticker swapping for Euro 2016. Business sorted!

sketchcrawl in trafalgar square

August 5, 2016August 5, 20165 Comments

On Saturday July 23 I went along to the “Let’s Draw Trafalgar Square” sketchcrawl organized by members of Urban Sketchers London. It was a hot, sweaty day, and the Square was filled with people: tourists, buskers, and people playing Pokemon Go. By the way I love how Pokemon Go is the latest Thing-To-Be-Annoyed-At among the moaning classes, just the mention of the words ‘Pokemon’ and ‘Go’ automatically bring forth well-rehearsed stories of people walking in front of buses or just not looking up from their phones in the street, neither of which were things that ever happened before people started catching Porygons and Spearows just a few weeks ago. I bet if you had a referendum to ban people playing Pokemon Go you’d get more than half the population saying “Gotta ban em all!” Just let them be, grandad. Anyway, as I sat and sketched the National Gallery and the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a man on an unusual bike in front of me beckoned tourists to have a go and try to win ten quid from him. I didn’t sketch him. I did speak to a few tourists, giving directions and talking about the sketchcrawl. The crowds really did start getting a bit much, but I look at this stretch of pedestrianized goodness and I still remember how much of a coughing traffic mess it used to be. That right there is where I would get my Night Bus back to Burnt Oak in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, twenty years ago. It’s so much better now.

We met up at half-time by the column of the Grand Old Duke Of York, and the sketchcrawl’s numbers had swelled to include many more of the international sketchers who would soon go up to Manchester, including a large contingent from Singapore. So great to see so many familiar faces, such as Tia Boom Sim (Singapore), Omar Jaramillo (Berlin) and James Oses (London), and also meet many new ones I had only ever known from following online, such as Stephanie Bower (Seattle), Patrick Ng (Singapore) and Emma-Jane Rosenberg (Ely), and many others. Above though is not the Duke of York, rather this is King Charles I. He is holding a European flag, which is either a pro-Europe protest or the opposite, depending on your views of Charles, I guess. Look at all those Boris Buses milling about in the background there. The interior temperature of those buses was on that particular day hot enough to fry an egg (but to do that you needs to brexit first). No, I didn’t get it either. This statue by the way is the middle of London – all distances from London are measured from this spot. Charles was the shortest English king (well, the shortest adult English king). After his head was chopped off, just down the street from here, he was considerably shorter. Ok that is your history lesson done now. I sketched this while squashed against a wall next to Tesco Metro, itself a highly squashed experience, stood with paints balanced on elbow, while a large number of anti-Mugabe protesters from Zimbabwe paraded past, while tourists waved selfie-sticks in front of them, and absolutely nobody was playing Pokemon Go. Samuel Johnson said a couple of centuries ago that the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross, and he wasn’t wrong. I bet he would have hated Pokemon Go though. Imagine his face when you asked whether Jigglypuff, Blastoise, and Lickitung are in his dictionary! It would have caused him terrible pericombobulations.

I had to leave the Trafalgar-Squarea (tourists! This is a real term used by actual Londoners by the way so you should definitely say it next time you are there) and escape to the slightly less busy area of Cambridge Circus. Still a busy bustling Bedlam, but I was able to find a spot next to a pub and sketch the Palace Theatre, where currently they are showing the play about Harry Potter, call “The Cursed Child”. I just read the expensive hard-bound script, and I can reveal it is pretty good, and probably makes more a hell of a lot sense watching it on stage. Tickets are sold out for the next century and a half, and it’s in two parts, for some reason (I think the reason rhymes with the words “bunny bunny bunny”). I have wanted to sketch this theatre for ages, so the Potter connection gave me a good reason too (for example if I sell this sketch, then the reason may well rhyme with “honey honey honey”). I remember when Les Mis ran here for about six hundred years, or something. I sketched for an hour and added the colour at home, as I had to run down to St. Martin’s for the final meeting of the sketchcrawl, where everyone puts their books on the ground and looks down at them. It was a fun event and I am glad I went, a good sketching first day back in London, and I spent a good bit of time catching up and chatting with my fellow sketchers afterwards in the cafe in the crypt beneath St. Martin’s. By the way that cafe is the place to go when it is hot outside and you want a lukewarm fizzy drink. I did some sketching of the sketchers…

And afterwards I met my friend Roshan, and we went for dinner, then out for a nice relaxed beer in Covent Garden, being joined by other friends Lee and Jamie. I sketched them too. A couple siting next to us kooed over eagerly at my book while sketching, it seemed like they thought they might be next in the book, but alas my sketching energy needed conserving for the next day, when I would be sketching Wren’s London. Nice segue there into the next post, huh!

london’s ancient highway

August 4, 2016August 4, 20165 Comments

For the first sketch back in London I wanted to draw this stretch of the River Thames again, looking out towards Waterloo Bridge. Last time I sat on Hungerford Bridge (a little bit further toward the middle, drawn to include the then-brand-new Shard) the skyline looked different. New skyscrapers keep popping up, all in fun zany shapes like some ten-year-old invented a futuristic robotopolis. They all have funny names too, the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater, the Walkie-Talkie, the Spaghetti Western, the Cordless Kettle, the Balrog, the Gelfling’s Prophecy, all very silly names. Ok some of those may not exist yet. The oldest structure in this sketch is actually Cleopatra’s Needle, on the left there, at about 3500 years old (placed here in the 19th century). Its twin is in New York, you can apparently use it to teleport between the two cities but they don’t like to tell anyone (see previous posts for feelings about Translatlantic travel). Ancient Egyptians used to smirk at the silly nickname too, also making fun of Thoth’s Sewing Machine, Rameses’s Hat-Stand and Mark Antony’s Hypodermic Syringe, and so on. Anyway, I sat on my uncomfortable little stool (now retired) and sketched for two hours straight, as London in the Summertime started up around me, tourists, day-outers, amblers all looked around and marveled at the view. Now if the proposed mess of a project the Garden Bridge gets built this view will be spoiled. I believe the Bridge would go just beyond Waterloo bridge, but with trees poking out of the top of it the views down river would be compromised somewhat. Not a fan. Might be useful elsewhere, but not there. It’s a folly of Boris and Lumley. We’ll see if it actually gets built. If it does, expect more cranes, more changing views, and more sketches along the ever-changing, ever-constant river. I do love this river.

Here’s the sketch I did on the same bridge in 2012:

need a little time to rest your mind

August 3, 20163 Comments

Transatlantic travel can leave you feeling cramped up for days. Well, it does now I am 40. I don’t remember it happening so much when I was 39, a few months ago. Ah well, a week of non-stop sketching and wandering both London and Manchester clutching sketchbook to my body in that peculiar way that I do probably added to the effect somewhat. I have not started all the scanning yet from the many sketches I did at the Urban Sketching Symposium in Manchester (July 27-30), as well as the Sketching Wren’s London sketchcrawl (July 24) and the Let’s Draw London sketchcrawl at Trafalgar Square (July 23). Here though are the sketches in transit, starting with the Virgin Atlantic flight to London from SFO. As usual I barely slept a wink, my knees being squashed against the seat in front. I love flying Virgin Atlantic, but their legroom in Economy truly sucks.

Virgin Trains on the other hand had pretty good legroom, and the train up to Manchester was a very pleasant journey. I sketched again in the “Lapin” Miquelrius notebook and listened to music from Mancunian bands while the countryside whizzed by.

On the train back from Manchester I sat by the window and sketched a much larger panorama; I had taken Paul Heaston’s workshop in Manchester and realized I do need to stretch that curving perspective a lot more. While I do love a bit of the old curvilinear as you know, I don’t stretch it quite so often as I might, and it’s a good game to play.

And in this last one, the squashed flight back to California. I watched Force Awakens as you can see, and Civil War (while wearing my Captain America hoodie). I also watched Zootopia, or rather, “Zootropolis” as it is called for some reason in the British release. Stay tuned for the sketches from England. There are a lot of them…