Citizen Sketcher

Here’s a few of my favorites from day two’s Morning Metro Sketching.

These puffy down-filled jackets are all the rage this year. I had to laugh at the look of the hugely inflated jacket contrasted with her skinny legs in tights.

Très Chic!

It’s fun learning to shape masses with color. I can honestly say I’ve never drawn so many puffer coats.

It’s hard to choose favorites – but I think this one is pretty emblematic of my approach this year. Big blocks of color, drawing done with the reserved white, and working fast so the colors melt inside a shape – but working one block at at time in an orderly manner, so the colors don’t break the shape.

It very much helps that it’s super dry in Montreal this time of year. You need lip-gloss, and moisturizer. The skin on my hands and feet crack every winter. This kind of dryness makes it easy to paint blocks of color without losing your drawing.

Draw with the whites! Draw with the edges of shapes!

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They call the underground mall which surrounds our Metro system the RESO (Réseau d’Échange Souterrain). There’s 20 miles of tunnels under the downtown core. You can get to three different universities. A couple of hospitals. It’s only a quick jaunt out in the cold to all the major museums. And we have a number of very good food-fairs down there – Quebecers do love good food!

So that’s 21 sketches for the day shift, on day two. I was sketching for maybe four or five hours – minus eating, minus travel, (most of my time is spent moving from place to place), so I’d guess these average 10-15 minutes a sketch.

I hope your marathon is going equally briskly! And hey – send me your links guys! I want to see what everyone is drawing this year. It’s probably not puffy jackets :)

~m

So I did this year’s marathon in three days.

My natural clock is to get up late – say 11? So I can be in the metro by 1pm, wander about like an itinerant sketching-hobo all afternoon, giving me plenty of chances for lunch, snacks, and boba tea – then attending a drawing event at night.

(I’m just going to things on Meetup.com this year, so the events are less diverse than in previous years.)

Tonight was a traditional gesture-drawing session with 2, 5, and 10 minute poses.

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I prefer gesture over long-pose, as you get more drawings. Though in the past I’ve done the same in longer poses by moving around the studio and getting multiple angles per pose.

These are the same paper as my subway sketches of course (same day). It’s an A5 (roughly 6×8″) Clairfontaine Aquapad; which is a sized pulp-paper sketchbook sheet – but gummed, not bound. I buy the pads, strip the covers and separate the whole block so they’re just a stack of cut sheets. I like this paper – nice and waterproof – the color can be lifted easily, pigment floats a good distance, and you get nice crisp edges, which I like. I’d buy the paper in large sheets but my local store doesn’t offer it, and this also saves a lot of cutting down!

Quick tips for watercolor during quick poses: >> Work on loose sheets so you can lay them out to dry >> Bring a number of backing boards (4-6) >> If you don’t have a table to work at, sit on the floor so you have enough space to do this >> Just use two or three colors (pink and blue here) and think value, not local skin tones >> A dry climate like Canadian Winter helps – paper doesn’t wrinkle, pages dry fast >> Good lighting helps, just paint the shadow shape, no color in the highlights :) >> If you’re working small like this, you can edit the figure – move limbs, crop limbs, don’t feel you have to fit the whole pose in a small sketch.

So that’s 14 for the evening, and it was 10 on the subway this AM, so 24 is just fine for Day One. You need 20 per day to stay on track to 100.

I have, of course, done all 100 in a day – but you have to either “be expressive” or “sacrifice quality” depending on how you look at things :) I enjoy doing it that fast :) But I’m also enjoying slowing down and working with color. It’s fun to describe form with just color and temperature shifts.

~m

So it begins! The tenth consecutive year of our sketching-marathon!

[ As always, check out the previous years HERE ]

It’s hard to believe I’ve done *anything* for ten years. I’ve always felt that I’m a person who doesn’t stick with things for long. But as I look back at the years (and that’s half the fun of doing this, seeing the tower of sketches grow ever taller) – it’s more like I’m a person who travels in loops – or maybe spirals – circling around the same habits and interests, always coming back to sketching, but gradually rising higher, so I come back around maybe just a little bit better each year.

(I hope so anyway! That’s something I want to talk about later – my obsession with improving my drawing? Why is that so important?)

But let’s start with: Why do I love sketching so much? To the point that I’d rather do *this* than work on ‘real projects’?

The *directness* is a big one – in the sense of – I really don’t like preparing for things! I really don’t like planning, or doing studies. If I over-prepare for something, I’ll loose interest when it comes to actually doing the thing.

I feel like, “There’s no point now, I’ve done all the fun part.”

I’ve been working on a big painting in the studio – (the biggest thing I’ve ever done by a good margin) – and I’ve gotten it to a nice under drawing, all mapped out, values blocked in – – but then it just sits there for weeks! I haven’t touched it in ages! I feel like – “Ug. Now the work begins.”

Does that sound familiar to anyone? Hah!

It’s WAY more fun to take a week off and go sketching :)

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I mean: that’s why I love the marathon format. The ticking clock of the deadline, and the super-satisfying feeling of the stack of 100 drawings piling up.

It’s everything I love about hyper-focus, and zero responsibilities :)

Perhaps the real magic is finding *small goals that can compound*.

But also – find something that doesn’t stress you to do. It’s not fun to be worried about ‘success’. It’s not fun to be doing things for a competition. It’s much more satisfying to just draw for your own curiosity.

Or in my case, I’m a drawing robot :) Keep moving, find the next person that grabs the eye, look for lighting, look for poses. Just do the next drawing, and repeat. :)

I mean – it’s a great cure for winter blues. It’s a great cure for doom-scrolling the news.

I am 100% positive that sketching is the same as playing music. (Though I don’t play any instrument). But it’s got to be the same kind of immersion – where everything falls away, and you can just do the thing you enjoy for hours at a stretch.

This year I gave myself a couple of extra ‘focus tricks’;

*I bought a three day metro pass*. So I can ride the subway all day and not worry about taking random stops. As soon as I have a few people I like, I pop up above ground, sit down in a café and paint them. (Our transit system allows you to ride on one fair in one direction – mixing trains and busses if you want – but as soon as you ‘backtrack’ towards home, that fare is over! and you pay again! It can be very annoying when you have a series of chores, but they don’t line up nicely).

Second trick; *I made sure I had a late afternoon drawing appointment every day*. This year I used Meetup.com and had something booked – life drawing class, a sketching meet-up, a writers group. (I like going to writers groups to draw – nobody ever complains).

This honestly saved me from going home early more than once. It was cold! I wore the wrong boots! But neverminded – I have to keep drawing!

:)

I’m sure this isn’t possible for everyone – but this is the good life of a retired sketcher :)

~m