the art of urban sketching!!

January 29, 2012January 29, 20126 Comments

Very exciting news!! They’ve only been and gawn and done it. Check out your bookstore this week, and see if they have a copy of The Art of Urban Sketching, the first book by the global non-profit, Urban Sketchers! As you may know I am the Urban Sketchers (USk) correspondent for Davis, ever since the site was first founded back in November 2008, so have been eagerly anticipating this book since the USk founder, Gabi Campanario, first announced he was putting it together. He has done a tremendous job, as have the hundred or so other contributors (all correspondents on either the main blog or the regional USk blogs). Check out the cover, illustrated by Ch’ng Kiah Kiean and Paul Heaston.

The book has three main sections: “Becoming an Urban Sketcher”, explaining what we mean by ‘urban sketching’ and how to take it up yourself, with peeks inside the featured artists’ sketching kits. The second section, “See the World, One Drawing at a Time”, which takes up the larger part of the book, is a voyage across the world, city by city, through the location drawings of local urban sketchers. Yep, Davis is in there too! See below; there’s a photo of me sketching with Luke, and of course, some fire hydrants. It looks great!

The third section is called “Drawing Inspiration”, and is divided into several themes such as ‘skylines, cityscapes and perspectives’ (a beautiful panorama by Gerard Michel is in there, plus one of my absolute favourite sketches, Toledo by Luis Ruiz), ‘monuments, cars and urban furniture’ (check out the great Bay Area lamp-posts by Jana Bouc), and ‘cafes, restaurants and bars’ (my favourite bar-sketcher, Stephen Gardner, is featured in there). Believe me, there is a lot in this book, and it is all excellent and inspirational.

There is part of Gerard’s panorama above, with cityscapes by Stephen Gardner and Shiho Nakaza, using that brown-black uniball signo pen that I love so much (I ‘discovered’ its delights myself last year, but it was Shiho who actually first showed me the pen, at the Portland Symposium).

What I think I really like about this book is that I feel so familiar with most of the work, through following all these urban sketchers over the years. Some of them I was less familiar with and can now discover or rediscover without having to click here or scroll down there. The biggest pleasure though is that this is all work by a community of sketching friends, many of whom I have had the honour of sketching alongside and learning from in person. Every time I pick it up, I want to go and draw something. And I’m sure you will too! The thing about urban sketching is that it’s accessible to all, all you need is soemthing to draw with and something to draw on. Oh, and something to look at, of course, and what better thing to look at than the town or city where you live?

The Art of Urban Sketching is published globally on February 1st, so check out your local bookstore and see if they have it or can order it for you, or of course get it on Amazon (it’s currently #1 in their section on ‘painting’!). I’m on pages 30, 46-47, and 381.

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ordinary people that are like you and me

August 27, 2010August 27, 2010Leave a comment

Back in Davis… Actually these were drawn straight after Portland, but just before Monterey, but I’m getting round to scanning my drawings. Quite the backlog built up…

You may have noticed, I have a thing for fire hydrants. I may even put together a special compendium (now don’t be silly). Most people ignore them. But as a Brit kid who read Richard Scarry and other such American picture-books, fire hydrants have always seemed exciting and exotic. Well, ‘exciting’ makes me sound like a trainspotter (I prefer drainspotting), but I still love seeing them dotted about towns and cities. Did you know (and I’m not talking to Americans, who obviously do know) that you can’t park your car in front of one? The fire department could have it removed. I like their shape too – some appear to be wearing hard-hats, some (like the one below, at UC Davis) look like those stocks they used to put crooks in back in ‘the old days’ to have tomatoes and abuse hurled at them. Now they just get parts on celebrity reality shows.

The other sketch above is of gas pipes, sticking out the back of a building on 2nd Street. It was in Portland where we (the European sketchers) were talking about how cool they looked, and Gerard Michel drew an excellent picture of some. I was eager to sketch them in Davis (having done so before, a good while ago). I think this all falls into ‘everyday objects we take for granted’, but if you’re illustrating your city, you can’t miss them out.

sketching to a close

August 17, 2010August 9, 20182 Comments

The final afternoon of the Urban Sketching Symposium… I for one was utterly exhausted, but still excited, and eager to keep sketching. I didn’t join the field sketching session I’d signed up for (mostly because I was messing about having fun taking photos of Gerard’s sketchbook laid out in the street), and stayed relatively close to the PNCA. I popped into Oblation Papers & Press, and bought myself an extremely nice sketchbook/notebook (because I needed yet another one), bound with a cover making it look like a French paperback. They are all produced on site, with top quality paper. And so, back to the sketching. I passed this one building, an old former warehouse, many times, and so decided to capture it in three drawings, vignette style, but without the borders I usually use. Because I was sat across the street, with trees in my way, I used those as my border. Ah, it was an experiment, sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t. It was a lot of fun drawing the building itself though, with its faded paintwork and old empty water tower stand. There is a lot of character in buildings like these.

Right outside it, an object I know my two-year-old son would love. I presume it to be some sort of bike rack, or street art, or something I don’t know, but it is shaped like a car and has a steering wheel at two-year-old height. It was similar to the ones shaped like the Fremont Bridge that are also dotted about. I was told by some of the Portland sketchers that it’s city law for any new development to have part of their budget dedicated to placing public art around any new building. That, my friends, is immeasurably cool.

The clock was ticking. This was, in fact, Worldwide Sketchcrawl Day #28, so hundreds of people (probably more) around the world were also out drawing their cities. The Symposiums sketchers, however, were being magnetically drawn back to the source, the PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art), where the Symposium was being held. I think everybody was capturing the building as their last sketch of this experience. I joked to Mike Daikabura that this was like the red-light district of sketching, urban sketchers on every corner (and you had to get in early for the best spot!). My last drawing, of the PNCA, is the one at the top of this post.

Okay, time’s up, pen’s down! On to the closing reception, to have a look at everybody’s sketchbooks. In fact, you can see photos and drawings from the Symposium in the “Urban Sketchers PDX 2010” Flickr group.

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/

saturday, what a day

August 16, 2010August 9, 20182 Comments

Day three of the Urban Sketching Symposium, and the morning session was studying Urban Architecture with Professor Frank Ching. I wasn’t very familiar with Frank and his work until the Symposium roster was announced, but he is an excellent teacher and has a long list of widely-read published work. I was excited to take his field sketching session, and we all strolled down to the Portland Saturday Market.

frank ching explains architectural sketching

It wasn’t too busy there yet, we found a good sketching spot by the fountain, and the urban sketchers dispersed to find interesting vantage points. I actually liked the spot where I was standing, beside the fountain, though it was right in the middle of the people traffic. Now normally I hide, I slink off the walls and try to be invisible – but this time, I decided, no, I’m going to stay right here, and camped my little stool down on that very spot. I even drew big, in the large Urban Sketchers Canson sketchbook we got free at the symposium, all in the spirit of trying something different. It was quite the experience; as more people added to the market’s throng, people would stop and see what I was doing, even take photos (that happened a fair few times, too), all while respecting my viewpoint. I liked this sketching in crowds thing – now I never thought I’d ever say that. The Symposium I think has given me a little more confidence to do such things.

there were a lot of pirates out that day

I ate some lunch from one of the food carts (a delicious but messy East African chicken wrap, if you’re interested), and sketched the large ‘Made in Oregon’ sign that is perched up on top of a nearby building. they really love the shape of their state, Oregonians. I bought a number of postcards recently in Medfiord all shaped like the state, it fits perfectly into a mailbox (unlike California, which fits perfectly into a Christmas stocking). And then I ran back to the PNCA for Frank’s lecture on ‘perspective for sketchers’, and got quite lost on the way.

i managed to sketch frank giving his lecture

I’m glad I didn’t miss it entirely – it was such a fun lecture. Frank gave us some great principles for sketching and constructing our urban drawings, including advice on what to focus on if you have limited time (such as leave details till last, quite the opposite of how I drew the Steel Bridge, for example, but very much how I drew the Saturday Market). This was one of the real values to coming to the Symposium: to learn new, or at least different, ways of approaching your sketches. I like to try different things, in order to incorporate them into my overall sketching voice, which I like to think is pretty distinct.

However, the most fun part (and possibly the best moment of the Symposium) was at the end, when Frank asked if we had any questions. I’ve been really interested in perspective lately, and have attempted to dabble in curvilinear perspective (partly inspired by the work of the man I was sitting next to, Gerard Michel), so I asked if he had any advice on that form. At this point, he passed the mantle over to Gerard, who as luck had it, had a flash drive with him full of his incredible curvilinear drawings, as well as diagrams explaining it. He gave an impromptu and highly animated talk (in French and some English) demonstrating the theory and how to approach it. I’m glad I asked! I’m eager to try it some more. You can see Gerard’s curvilinear work on his flickr site. Prepare to be utterly amazed.

Interview with Prof. Frank Ching on the Symposium website.

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/

portland’s urban composition

August 14, 2010August 9, 20182 Comments

Yes, I know; sometimes, taking the mick is just too easy.

The afternoon of Day Two was a sketching trip to colourful Pioneer Square, with Gabi’s Urban Composition group. The Sun was casting golden light across the city, as it lowered behind the downtown buildings. There were people out with signs, protesting this and decrying that, most of them against the various wars going on at this period in history. This peculiar pair, however, were slightly separate to most; make what you will of their placard. I can’t say that I agreed with the bearded boiler-suited sandal-wearer’s slightly dubious and sinister assertions. Everyone’s entitled to their views. So I wrote the lettering with a different blue felt-tip pen, which has the appropriate (and highly amusing) name of ‘Le Pen’. I did show them the sketch though, and they liked it too, even asking for a photocopy. Sometimes, taking the mick is just too easy, so I’ll leave it up to you.

I also sketched a fellow sketcher, Kalina (aka Geminica), one of the Portland urban sketchers, aka the ‘girl in the red hat’. She was sketching the action in Pioneer Square, as a huge screen ws erected to show a classic movie out in the open (I think it was like Three Amigos or Muppets Take Manhattan or something). Here’s a post by another Portland sketcher, Alanna, of me doing the sketching. Yes, I still wear that England shirt, even after that World Cup.

Hey, are you proud of me, sketching all these people?! I’m learning a few things. Prior to the field sketching session, I went to Gabi‘s very interesting lecture on the artist as reporter. Gabi Campanario is a staff sketcher-reporter for the Seattle Times – see his great column online at Seattle Sketcher. Here he is on the light rail – a load of us crowded into a train and started sketching each other like crazy – and you may notice his sketching stool, which is exactly the same one as mine (though his is blue).

I spent the evening meeting and conversing with some of the other Portland sketchers, a very nice bunch; you should check out the Urban Sketchers: Portland blog. The USk correspondent from Tokyo, Kumi Matsukawa, did a great sketch of me talking with local artist Bill Sharp, which you can see here. I hope one day to sketch with them all again, and perhaps capture more of the city’s colourful characters.

“in viaggio col taccuino”

August 13, 2010August 9, 20182 Comments

I was pretty amazed and inspired by Simonetta Capecchi’s lecture about collaborative sketchbook projects in the city of Naples, Italy, where she lives and works. I had a pen-pal from Naples when I was a kid, and the city has always seemed so far away and unusual to me, yet still in my native Europe, so I was fascinated by her stories. Simo’s work and ideas promoted a real sense of a community expressing itself through art. It reminded me not only of other sketchbook projects that I’ve seen or been involved in, and also what we do in every worldwide sketchcrawl or even this symposium, the art of representing a city through different voices and personal styles, but it also reminded me of place-specific projects that I have had experience of back when I studied and practised interactive theatre. Local people expressing their locale, telling its story, its ‘everyday’. Here my mind exploded with ideas. I want to get Davis drawing! I also liked the project she promoted whereby a sketcher would take an old book about their city, and sketch scenes from their city inside it cover to cover, across the text. As I discussed with her afterwards, that would be a wonderful thing to do somewhere like London, I think, thought maybe not so much Davis (only because Davis-centric literature is slightly thin on the ground). It was inspiring stuff, and a reminder that there are so many angles from which you can approach art, and urban sketching.

As did other people, I sketched the lecture room around me. There’s Liz from Australia, and Gerard from Belgium. I sat next to Suzanne from North Carolina, sketching the same subjects. Amazing how the internet has enabled us urban sketchers from around the world to come together and learn from each other. Simo showed me a sketch she made of Mount Shasta from the window of her plane, as she flew north from San Francisco, and I showed her my similar sketch of the same mountain from the window of the car as we drove south from Oregon last month. That was pretty cool.

Continuing the Italian theme, for lunch before the lecture I drank a bottle of San Pellegrino orange soda from Italy; (you may recall I sketched a can of this recently). I didn’t know they came in Orangina bottles! While eating lunch, we noticed that there was a wedding party arriving, and the bride and groom themselves sat behind us at a tiny table eating over-the-counter pizza. It was a funny sight, but the quick sketch I did did it no justice, so all you’re getting is the bottle.

build it up with iron and steel

August 11, 2010August 9, 20182 Comments

Urban Sketching Symposium, Day 2. Lapin led the Urban Line field session down to the banks of the Willamette River, to sketch the Steel Bridge. Portland is famous for its bridges. Can’t leave town without drawing at least one.

I was pleased to sketch this, as I wanted something to really sink my teeth into, or at least my micron pens. I felt once it was done that I’d got it out of my system. The morning started out overcast, and the stark, industrial structure provided quite the drama against the blank sky. The bridge moved once or twice, it’s bottom level rising to allow ships to pass, laughing at my previous assertion that I draw architecture because it stands still. Joggers and cyclists passed by as we sketched, freight trains rolled across the river, and the strange sculpture behind us made intermittent and unexplained noises not unlike a monkey smashing a cymbal. We all seemed to have our own approach; I watched how Lapin started from a detail and drew outwards, and how Gerard Michel (pictured right, drawing in the special Urban Sketchers Japanese style Moleskine) constructed it as an architect would, and I leapt in somewhere in between. I started in the middle, but had a rough outline of where I would be going (which I only marginally stuck to), but concentrated on small details as I went along rather than after finishing the outline. I purposely left it incomplete as I liked the effect.

The Sun came out, but I kept my bridge sketch colourless. I did add a little thumb sketch on the same page though of one of the spires of the Portland Convention Center across the Willamette, showing how the sky had turned blue, but the bridge lent itself to cold black and white.

At the end, we laid out our sketchbooks side by side and reviewed each others work. This is always one of my favourite parts of a group sketch, to see all of our different styles and interpretations laid out side by side.

sketching as the sun sets

August 10, 2010April 30, 20204 Comments

Oh, the sketching stops for no one. Day One of the Symposium was not over yet. Still, I had a chance to relax in the hotel with some noodles and a cup of tea. I looked out of the window and drew part of the view opposite while talking on the phone. Then, as the evening came, I copied the sunset onto some brown paper and pottered off to Powell’s Books. Wow! What a place! I didn’t sketch there, I was too busy looking at books. That place is huge, a bookshop lover’s dream. A little while before, I had visited Reading Frenzy, to catch up on some of Portland’s well-known zine culture. I bought one local zine, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve considered (because it’s been suggested) that I turn some of my series into zines, and that is on the table in the foreseeable future, so it was good to see what other people are doing out there.

And so on to Portland’s famous beer culture. I stopped into Deschutes Brewery, where several other Urban Sketchers were already camped out, and caught up on some great conversation and a few more attempts at people-sketching. Below are Lapin, Don Colley from Chicago, and Frank Ching.

Don and I went on to Jake’s Crawfish for a beer and a last sketch of the day. It was an interesting looking place and we both sketched the same scene. His work is great, very dramatic and full of life, and he sketches in a huge old book filled with incredible drawings. It was a pleasure to watch him sketch and learn from him.

Exhausted, i got back to the hotel and posted a photo of the day one sketchbook. Phew! And there were still two more days of full-on sketching to come…

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/

drawing in the dark

August 10, 2010August 9, 2018Leave a comment

It was almost complete darkness when I was drawing these. The only light was from the projector, illustrating Matthew Brehm’s excellent lecture on the history of sketching as a social activity, and from the laptop of the guy changing the slides. Well, it wasn’t going to stop me from getting another couple of sketches in, and what a fun exercise. I had no idea what they actually looked like until I got outside into the light; I’m pleased with the results!!

It’s funny; normally, I would draw in a lecture or meeting if I was bored, but this is the Urban Sketcher’s Symposium, and the rules are on their head. Matthew’s lecture was very, very interesting. As an architectural teacher he takes students to Rome every year, and compared his own experiences alongside the grand tours of a couple of centuries ago, as well as looking at old drawing clubs and how the newer phenomenon of blogging and posting your art on flickr and such sites has created a new global community of artists, which has in turn given birth to Urban Sketchers and the Symposium itself. (Which he described as the ‘Woodstock of Sketching’) What I enjoyed was his focus on the connections that drawing has forged between us, not just right now but also to the sketchers of the past – those people walking around cities drawing things, just as we are now, having those same thought processes that compel them to do so. That’s what I was thinking about, anyhow, as I drew these people in the dark.

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/

pearly afternoon

August 9, 2010August 9, 20184 Comments

Day one of the Urban Sketching Symposium continued. After Lapin’s inspiring lecture about an sketchbook illustration project he recently did for the French wine town of St Emilion, we set forth once more to sketch some urban architecture with Simonetta Cappecchi, the Urban Sketcher from Naples. We were in Jameson Square, but I kind of wandered of on my own a little, looking for things around the Pearl District to get me into the sketching groove. Above is another fire hydrant, this time sketched in a group sketchbook that was being passed around from sketcher to sketcher to each add something. I have a thing about fire hydrants. Answers on a postcard.

I settled at the corner of the square for a sketch of an interesting corner, a building shell converted into some retail and arts space, with the Portland Union railway station in the background. I was going to add colour, but decided to keep it black and white.

Portland is a cool place. I wandered about the Pearl district looking for a Portlandesque vista, and found a couple of views that jumped out on me. I don’t recall what that big building by the river with the water-tower on top is called. Answers on a postcard. A passer-by who stopped to chat did tell me, but I stupidly didn’t write it down.

I know what that bridge is called though: Broadway Bridge. Bright red steel against a blue sky, you can’t go wrong with that. I liked hw I was looking upon it from what seemed to be riverside wasteland, and it reminded me a little of what parts of the south bank of the Thames looked like when I was a kid, undeveloped but on its way.

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/