#OneWeek100People 2024 : Pushing Outward

As much as I love #OneWeek100People, there is a tension for me. The ability to take a week off and go sketching is an absolute self indulgence. I’m retired-slash-unemployed (the line is fuzzy), and we don’t have kids. No too many illnesses at home to take care of. So, I’m completely free to ‘do nothing’ if I feel like it :)

But – to be honest – I don’t feel like I’m learning that much any longer? With the sketchbook drawings I mean.

I know that I’m getting incrementally better with every sketch, but – when you’re a beginner, you proceed by leaps and bounds. It’s very gratifying! And it feels very productive. When you’ve reached a more advanced level, it can feel like you’ve peaked. Your technique isn’t changing anymore; now it’s a matter of refinement.

Like playing an instrument, you can become more fluid, more expressive – but you can also fall into a kind of professionalism where every performance is identical. Somewhat like the piano player in the hotel lobby, playing on autopilot.

Having the goal of 100 in a week is a way to attack that. To put yourself under stress, to try and get back to the beginner mindset. To add a little adventure back into the mix. But it can also become a mechanical process of tweaking efficiency. Making art into an assembly line. I don’t think anybody wants that.

That’s one of the reasons why I picked up the oils a few years ago. I was trying to go at them with a completely open mind – but I think I’m still a sketcher :) We always build on what we know. I love the calligraphic stroke, the use of dark marks as a chunk of structure. I still think in terms of ‘Larger to Smaller, Lighter to Darker’. And using the white paper, which is watercolor thinking.

In the case of these paintings, I’m letting a scrubbed out underpainting show through, much like a wash beneath the ink strokes. But with the oil, I have the added dimension of thickness, and the direction, or movement in the brushwork.

A paint stroke in oil is underlined by the shadows it casts on a smoother passage. Sometimes in watercolor you’ll get a halo or a hard edge that pools around a stroke, due to pigment floating to the edge of the dampness. In the oil, this is an actual cast shadow which moves with the light. Somehow I feel an oil painting is more ‘alive’ because of this.

I know some of you don’t love it when I talk about oils :) I see the comments :) I think it’s a sense that I’m leaving people behind, or that I’ve ‘moved on’ from what you came here for.

But if you look at this oil sketch, it could just as easily be gouache over watercolor. It could be posca markers over glazing in colored pencil. The underlying way of seeing is the same.

I’ll end this #OneWeek100People marathon with this ‘failed painting’, because it’s the failures that teach us more than the successes :)

I didn’t like the way this one turned out, so I scraped it off. The sooner you scrape off an oil, the easier it is to start again.

If you let it dry, you have to sand off the panel, and at that point it’s almost not worth saving it. I worry about the dust being toxic. Paint pigment is only a hazard if you inhale it, or it’s transported through the skin / lungs via solvent. I don’t paint with solvents anymore, only linseed oil, so they’re perfectly safe to paint with – but sanding down a panel is about the worst thing you can do. Wear a proper filter mask!

Anyhooo – I was surprised to see the the under-drawing remained intact. The same kind of sketch is underneath all of these heads. It exactly like a gesture drawing done in charcoal, or the pencil lines underneath yesterday’s watercolor sketches. This is done in pink gesso (regular gesso, tinted with a few drops of red ink), so A: it dries fast and you can paint over it immediately, and B: I can correct the drawing with white gesso, or even ‘white it out’ and start again.

So! That’s my week! I hope you guys had a great time with your own marathon. I’ve been looking at the Facebook group, (though Facebook is being annoying and only showing me a fraction of the posts). And also seeing some of you tagging me on Instagram, and it’s been a great pleasure to feel like I’m sketching along with you.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

I’ve made a few noises about ways I can change up my own #OneWeek100People. (Such as trying to get 100 every day, and seeing what the impossible challenge does for my mindset.) I did also think of trying to do 100 people entirely from imagination. Crazy as that sounds :) The complete opposite of urban sketching :) I’ve always toyed with the idea of doing a comic book, so that’s a skill I’d love to take on.

If anyone has other ideas for how to expand or enhance the event, please drop me a line. I would like this event to be open to any approach. More ways we can keep learning together.

Take care, and happy sketching!

~m