I have been loving this little artistic vacation. Thanks to everyone who has been drawing their own 100 – you’ve all been keeping me motivated!
I know, I know – I’m very fortunate to be able to sketch as much as I do. And I’m just gloating about it in front of you guys who have to take time off work or find drawing time after taking care of the household. I know everyone might not have the luxury of all this free time.
But of course, there are always trade offs. I have to go back into the salt-mines of digital art next week, and every minute of this fun is going to make the next deadline harder. I’ve been relishing every drop of watercolor these last few days.
>Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
I spend so much time at home, I think I don’t have a healthy immune system. Going out and being around humans – definitely makes me sick. These were all done with a thudding head cold. I had numerous close calls. Trying not to blow my nose with a tissue dabbed in Perylene Maroon.
These heads are done from people in the Sktchy app.
I used little 4×6″ cards of watercolor paper, so they’re kind of ‘life size’ next to my iPad. I would say they were about 20 minutes each? Definitely faster and smaller than my last Sktchy binge. No particular reason, I just wanted to see how many I could do in a single day, and working smaller is usually faster.
The answer when you’re sick with a cold is: 15 in a day.
I wasn’t timing myself, and I would work on two or three at once. Laying big shapes (planes of the head, pools of eye sockets) on one head, then starting the next head. By the time I had a few ‘sculpted’, I could go back and put dark details on top of the dried wash.
With these, I’m trying to use less modelling than I might normally. Seeing how much I can do in the first pass. The guy on the left, being the only really successful example. His beard, the brows, pupils and nostrils are the only ‘retouches’. The entire head is otherwise done in the first pass. I will be impressed if one day I can manage to completely paint in one go. That would be awesome. I think it’s possible. But in the others here, I think you can see I had to go back into the shadows my usual three times.
This fellow is my absolute favorite of the day. Keeping the retouches to the minimum each layer. Trying to make the under painting do more work. This is the upside of this whole process. If you can keep up the pace, at least ONE of them will be a gem. Whereas, if you work the whole week on a single masterpiece – it’s kind of a gamble.
Anyway – getting somewhere Less is More-ish with him. But he’s such a character! It’s actually much easier painting a guy like this – over say, a smooth faced young lady.
If you want to check out the before/after of the reference photos, you’ll need to get Sktchy on an iOS device. Find me in there (under Marc Holmes) and these will be tagged to the models profiles. And thanks also to you guys who gave of your faces!
So that’s #OneWeek100People2017 for me.
It will be interesting to do it again with you all next year. I have no idea what I’ll be thinking about that far in the future:) But we’ll all be able to post our progress – these ones, next to the 100 in 2018!
>Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
#OneWeek100People2017: Show me the People!
The response around the web for #OneWeek100People2017 has been tremendous!
Here’s a small gallery of sketchers I found on Instagram. Click the pics to be taken to the artists’ photo streams.
There’s just as many on Twitter. <click there!
If you’re on Facebook, throw the hashtag in the search bar and find out who your friends have been sketching :)
I’m having a blast going down this internet rabbit hole. A vast range of styles and subjects from sketchers all over the world! People seem to be having a great time with it :)
Thanks to everyone who’s been posting with the hashtag. Are you feeling the world wide sketching community?
>Ed Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
I will say this. Sketching on location is never boring.
We managed to score some press passes to the Canadian National Pro Jiu-Jitsu tournament, via the good people at the Montreal Camera Club.
The sporting event was originally scheduled to be held here, but due to an obscure and rarely enforced rule regarding which combat sports the public is allowed to perform, it was banned from Quebec, and had to quickly find a new venue in Ontario.
> Ed Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
But this is #OneWeek100People2017! So a four hour drive for four hours of sketching – that seems about right!
At least for a subject that is so different from the everyday coffee shop sketch. (Oops, that’s not a dig at any other sketchers :), Some people make coffee into a real subject :)
These drawings are interesting to me.
That’s a trigger-word in art. ‘Interesting’.
It’s always dicey when someone unlimbers Interesting vs. the clearly favorable ‘Stunning’. Though I always find that a bit of an over-statement. (‘Literally Stunning!’). But on the other hand, nobody wants to hear ‘Nice’. I personally like to provoke a ‘Fascinating’. But even a ‘What am I looking at?’ is an honest response.
There’s a fine line between an observational sketch and a cartoon.
These drawings are done so quickly and so instinctively – they end up being a kind of visual short hand. Like all spontaneous sketches, they’re a form of note-taking.
How, after all, do you draw something that is happening too quickly to see? That really is gone before you have understood it?
All you can do is make shapes that echo the angles and the masses. Then work as quickly as possible from a fading memory. It truly is an impression.
As much as I talk all the time about separating your ego from ‘good and bad’, ‘success and failure’, I am kind of impressed with what I got. Check that center drawing against the photographic evidence! Come on! That’s pretty cool eh?
I think, when it comes to sketching people in action this week, I’m not going to top this.
Tomorrow I’m going to try something different. I’ll be back in the studio, babying a juicy head cold I’ve picked up, and I’ll be seeing what I can do with a marathon portrait painting session.
See you tomorrow!
> ED Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
One of my goals surrounding reportage sketching (as a past-time) is never draw the same thing twice.
I figure that’s got to be the best way to keep on learning. Both about drawing, and about how to use my sketching to engage with the world.
> Ed Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
So, I found my almost 50 year old self, feeling very much out of place, at a late night Hip Hop Dance workshop put on by Studio Diss Torsion.
This event was a small part of our Nuit Blanche or “Sleepless Night”. A French invention in which a city puts on an all night arts festival.
Here in Montreal, it’s a mix of street fair, public performance, and contemporary art. There’s an emphasis on giant out-door projection art and robotic light shows. Our downtown Place des Arts district is full of small stages; this year there was a zipline running over the square. All the galleries and theaters are open, and the underground city (our metro-level shopping mall) is host to the Art Souterrain festival.
But if you’re looking for a chance to sketch people in motion, a classroom is a perfect situation.
The instructors know they’re on display, so it doesn’t seem as weird to have someone ‘taking notes’. Plus most of these groups live by word of mouth – so they’re likely to be open to a visit from a group of online sketchers.
But mainly, they tend to be doing something over and over while the students imitate. Giving you a chance to develop a sketch from gesture through repeated passes of refinement, each time you see your pose come back around.
There was a lot more going on out there at Nuit Blanche. I did stop for a few moments when I spotted these anachronistic Habitant Fire Jugglers.
This is so typical of Montreal. Hipster History!
But sadly it was too dammed cold to go any further with these. I will say, when it’s absolutely freezing – just a pencil works better than a frozen fountain pen.
So just imagine these guys juggling flaming torches and spinning double-ended fire sticks to the accompaniment of rollicking fiddle music.
I only kid because I love. It’s awesome the way Montréalais look for any excuse to do something in historical costume! I’ve got no problem with sketching that :)
Welcome to day two of our people sketching marathon!
> Ed Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
We were very lucky to have MTL:USK sketcher Elissa Baltzer arrange a sketching expedition to the Lakeshore Light Opera. We took in a dress rehearsal for their production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore or: The Witch’s Curse.
This was the first fitting for the costumes, so we had an excellent opportunity to sketch while the costume designers lined the actors up and reviewed them top to bottom.
Sketching a rehearsal is much easier than an actual performance. At least some of the time the lights are on. And when they’re testing stage lighting, you’re free to use a small lamp (or your smart-phone’s flashlight) to see what you’re drawing.
Something I *don’t* recommend in an actual performance. The people around you deserve to see the show without distraction.
Naturally, being a Gilbert and Sullivan piece, the story is on the silly side. A brothers’ love triangle, a madwoman, a bevvy of eternal bridesmaids and ten generations of cursed baronets providing an excuse for rapid fire songs delivered with an auctioneer’s rhythm.
The music struck me as a precursor to Rap. It certainly has the same aspects of tongue twisting flow and cutting humor. Apparently this kind of vaudeville is called a Patter Song.
The first act (the love triangle) was confusing to me. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel sorry for the disguised Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd? Or laugh at him for his foppishness. I certainly didn’t like his sailor brother who steals his girl! What a jerk! I expect this makes more sense when seen properly :) But maybe not!
I’m sure G&S are thinking – ” Whatever! – Just send the bridesmaids bouncing across the stage again!”. Empire line dresses seem designed to wake up the husbands in the audience.
Things start to get good in the second act, after the appearance of the Wicked Baron, culminating in an epic scene where young Ruthven is confronted by the ghosts of his cursed ancestors.
Sorry if this is a spoiler, but really, I think it’s not too soon.
It seemed that good old G&S had been looking at a trunk full of costumes thinking – what can we write that uses all these moth eaten outfits? I know – second act – ghosts across the centuries!
I was having trouble keeping track of characters, so I was calling these guys Shakespeare Ghost, Tycho Ghost, Crusader Ghost, Pope Ghost, etc – and there was one cross-dressing ghost I was calling Baron Olando.
So that was our epic sketching night at the operetta!
Probably if you look around, you’ll find a theater in your own area that would enjoy having some artists drop by. Actors love being drawn :) And stage managers love social media about their performance.
>Ed Note: You can read the rest of this week-long series of posts HERE <
So – what is this #OneWeek100People2017 all about?
> Ed Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
Is it a race? A stunt? A kind of monastic self-flagellation? Or just an excuse to get out and have fun drawing?
Well, why not all of the above!
The sketches that follow are from an afternoon at the Montreal Beaux Arts museum.
Our USK:MTL club was there to check out a newly opened wing of the museum, and take in an exhibition of work by Marc Chagall.
My favorite things were his rough designs for opera costumes. Which have been reproduced as actual garments displayed on mannequins. I didn’t count these (above center) as part of my people sketches.
The show was packed! But that was a plus for me. I sat myself down beside one of the informational panels and just dropped into the zone – sketching the endless stream of people stopping to read.
Ever since “going pro” as a sketcher, ironically, I don’t get to draw for fun as often as I’d like.
I mean – I make sure everything I draw is fun. I’ve learned to stay away from jobs I don’t enjoy. But still – sketching for a client or sketching for a publication isn’t quite the same as drawing for pleasure.
This project is a way to put fun back onto the menu. I’ve booked five days off – even if it means short-cutting my paying work!
I think, an artist should do this kind of thing every few months.
You need to keep the passion for art alive. For me, that means drawing for the simple enjoyment, and detaching from ‘good or bad’, ‘success or failure’.
You need to plant the seeds of your own artistic progress.
If I’m trying to win a competition or publish a drawing, then I need to hold myself back. Play it safe, so the drawing turns out in a pleasant way. I end up carefully planning, measuring my drawings, practically seizing up with concern that it turns out right.
That’s the beauty of this 100 person goal. This sprint to the finish. Now I have an excuse. Clock’s ticking! I get to say screw all that and just draw without consequence. Completely instinctively.
I haven’t gone out with this ultra-light sketching kit for ages. I’m using a home-made accordion booklet, and two pens. An ultra-fine Platinum Carbon pen and a Kuretake #13 brush pen. (*affiliate links, thanks).
I’d forgotten how fun it is to limit your options. When you only bring the bare minimum for drawing tools, you can’t get bogged down in technical concerns.
One of my weird personal goals is ‘fluency’.
The ability to throw down a line and have it say exactly what I want.
I’m prepared to invest a great deal of effort in the illusion that it’s effortless :) Don’t ask me why this became a goal. I guess it’s just when you see some amazing artist and you say “How the hell did they do that?!?”.
I like it when I look at my own drawings and have that feeling.
We’ve said this project calls for sketching 20 people a day to hit the goal.
I was having so much fun, I finished 100 people in about 4 hours. That makes these 2.5 minute gesture drawings (on average).
So for those of you worrying that this challenge is too ambitious – here’s my simple solution!
Limit yourself to the most basic tools. You don’t even need the brush pen. Swear to yourself you will not judge your work. Find a spot with a big crowd of people, and just do 2 minute gestures for an entire afternoon. Anyone can accomplish this! Your gestures may not look like mine – but that’s just a matter of hand skills.
I honestly feel – if you do 100 drawings in a row – at least one of them will be the best thing you’ve drawn all week :)
And if somehow you can’t see the gems (you’ll see them later when you look back!) at least you can assure yourself you’ve put in some miles towards your goal. You’re moving the progress bar. Leveling up your skills with every drawing.
So now that I’ve hit the week’s goal of 100 people – I can spend the rest of the week truly playing.
Stay tuned for whatever experiments I have in store :)
I honestly don’t even know yet. I’ll be taking this one day at a time.
>Ed Note: You can read the rest of this series of posts HERE <
Announcing a new event! #OneWeek100People2017: Monday March 6th – Friday March 10th
UPDATE!: EVERYTHING TO DO WITH #ONEWEEK100PEOPLE IS NOW ON IT’S OWN PAGE: [ HERE ] Or just click on the tab #OneWeek100People in the navigation bar above. Thanks! ~m
Do you want to get better at drawing portraits? Or people in action?
Every aspiring artist has heard the advice, ‘Carry a small sketchbook at all times!’. We’re all told ‘Practice drawing every day!’. This is of course great advice.
But sometimes we need a little extra motivation.
I’ve always enjoyed giving myself a playful challenge. A short- term tangible goal.
It has to be something that’s achievable – but also a bit of a stretch. We need to commit to giving a little extra effort! Plus – we need to give ourselves permission to clear our busy schedules and make time for art.
Taking inspiration from the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), this year, from March 6th to 10th, urban sketchers Marc Taro Holmes (Montreal, CA) and Liz Steel (Sydney, AUS) invite the world to join in with #OneWeek100People2017.
The simple goal is: Draw 100 people in one week.
You can do it any way you want. Pencil drawings, or pen and ink, maybe watercolor sketches. Whatever it is that you’d like to practice most.
We’re committing to draw about 20 people a day. We’ll be posting our work every day for the week of March 6-10. If you want to join in, use the hashtag #OneWeek100People2017 and everyone can find your work too!
We just want everyone to see what it feels like to follow through on that advice ‘practice every day’. It’s a big commitment. But it’s possible to do without completely disrupting your life. Or at least – you can choose how disruptive you want it to be :)
The goal is PRACTICE. Not perfection. So maybe it’s only 20 minutes of work each day if you’re doing one minute gesture drawings. Or maybe a few of them are 5 to 10 minute studies, and you have to find a way to catch up later in the week.
The first time I did this 2015, I just decided – for one week, I’ll be ten minutes late for everything. I would skip my train and sketch people waiting on the platform. Or go to the movies and get a few drawings of the people in line, and keep sketching at dinner after. Whatever it takes to draw 100 people in five days.
Here’s some suggestions:
- Use the hashtag #OneWeek100People2017 and we can keep each other on track. (Hashtags like #OneWeek100People2017 aren’t just for Twitter anymore! They’ll work on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram,Tumblr, Google+, almost anywhere you post your art normally, there will be a way to use a hashtag. It’s the easiest way, nobody has to change where they usually post :)
- Plan to swap out any ‘scheduled free time’ for drawing. Tivo your shows, skip the gym, don’t start up that video gaming night – just for one week.
- Be prepared! Work up a list of crowded places to draw people – visit a park, the public library, go shopping, or to a sporting event.
- Maybe search out public performances (live music at a pub, a lecture, or a reading); somewhere you have people on stage. It’s easier to stare at a performer.
- Go drawing in groups. If it looks like you’re a club or a class, people give you the benefit of the doubt.
- If you don’t want to do it live-on-location, cue up a you tube play-list, sign up for Flickr, or download the iOS app SKTCHY.
- Give yourself permission to succeed. Don’t overthink the results – just draw! I promise you’ll see results at the end of the week. No matter how fast you sketch, over a whole week, at least ONE will be amazing :)
This just in: I will be teaching at the USK International Symposium in Chicago! July 26-29, 2017
Just got the news – Excited to say I’ll be teaching this year at the 2017 International Urban Sketchers Symposium in Chicago! #USkChicago2017. (Register here!)
This will be the first public painting event this year (that I know of right now), and the only in-person workshop I expect to give in 2017. Though I am lining up at least one other demonstration event as we speak.
Chicago will be a whole new challenge for me. Talk about putting the Urban in Urban Sketching :) I feel the need to go practice my glass buildings.
We did see some of that last year in Singapore – but I for one dodged drawing the skyscrapers. I think it was easier to get out of the canyons of the city and into a tropical garden, or in front of a temple/mosque :) This year we’ll be in the Loop district – so I’m expecting a bustling metropolis as far as the eye can see.
I’ll be a kid from a small town, heading to the big city. Can you point me to the nearest cute little church yard please?
So – bear with me for an update this spring, saying exactly what I’ll be teaching. I need to document some step-by-step demonstrations before/while I write the course.
But I do know it’ll be built on the idea of ‘direct watercolor‘. That is: watercolor silhouettes with minimal-to-no drawing underneath. Something suitable for the very high skill level of USk workshop attendees – and matching the high speed, ultra-portable kind of watercolor sketching I end up doing when I’m out with other Correspondents.
Can’t wait to see everyone there! I think it’s going to be the biggest USK symposium ever!
~m
Push Processing
I was out doing some life drawing the other day.
I often say I learned everything I know about drawing from the model. Back in college it was the only observational drawing in the curriculum. So it’s still where I go when I want to test a color, or try out a technique.
I’m still working on this approach using shapes, rather than (relying on) line. This one (above) is probably the only good one from this session. The drawing is made of three shapes. From left to right: The light side edges are drawn with the background tone, then there is a gap of reserved white, and the shadow side edge closes the light-shape with a fused midtone. I don’t count the darks laid on top such as hair, under hand, knee and thigh. It’s just three shapes – with accent touches :) So, that is a goal of mine. To be able to do anything with three shapes.
I’ve done so much drawing over the years, I can’t seem to break myself from using line. I’m not even sure that I would want to :) But it’s a thing that’s always in the back of my mind these days. Banishing ‘artificially’ drawn contours might be the skill that unlocks the next level of painting.
Still, most of these are more like 50/50 line and tone.
I suppose – if I keep working on the white page, there’s no choice except using a line to create an edge. So the answer next time will be: do them all with a background tone! I dunno why that’s so hard for my brain :) But the truth is, when faced with a 5 or 10 minute drawing, you fall back on instinct. You draw by reflex. There’s not much time for conscious thought.
Right about now, someone will be asking me about the color.
Hah! Well, it’s just my normal favorites for dark-haired Caucasians: Perlyne Maroon for the base of the skin, Buff Titanium for pastelization (not a real word) and Raw Umber Violet / Bloodstone Genuine / DS Moonglow for darks – BUT – then I’ve been playing around in Photoshop.
I like to mess about with curves adjustment layers, just to see what it might look like had I painted it differently. Every so often you come up with something by accident, that you might want to do on purpose another time.
This sort of digital color grading is how I learned to paint stronger, darker watercolors over the last few years.
Back in the day, my watercolors were always too pale and too primary. I used too much water, and too pure color – cadmiums, and blues like Ultramarine or Cerulean. So – I would adjust the scan in Photoshop and see that if I’d pushed the values deeper, darker and more desaturated, I liked them so much more. Over time, I learned to match what I liked in the digital corrections, in real life by changing my palette and using more pigment.
I don’t mean to say anything deep here – just showing how I’m always doing the same sort of things, but also – always experimenting in small ways. Stretching a tiny bit each time. Gradually creeping towards better paintings.
Sketching Museum Montages with Taxidermy Animals
Blog readers will know, I’m a huge fan of sketching from taxidermy animals. It’s better than the zoo :) After all, they hold perfectly still for you.
This year, I had two opportunities to squeeze in a mini-workshop on the topic of Montage Drawings. Once in Manchester, as we hid out from a rainy day in the Manchester Museum, and again in Myrtle Beach, doing montages in the sculpture galleries at Brookgreen Gardens.
I’m finding the Montage – that is, making a composition out of multiple figures or objects – to be more and more interesting these days. It’s a way to keep doing the still-life drawing that I enjoy, but to end up with a more exciting composition built out of what might otherwise be ‘boring’ academic portraits of objects.
This drawing was kind of a breakthrough towards this approach. Just something I did for fun one day.
For whatever reason, I didn’t turn the page as I’d normally do, and this overlap just happened.
I wasn’t planning for the effect, but on the other hand I had brought a few large sheets rather than a more typical stack of small boards – so subconsciously I was prepared for it.
They’re not ‘good’ drawings I suppose. They’re hard to understand. But for whatever reason I’m enjoying ‘complexifying’.
I have this idea that I should be overlapping forms, playing with scale, proportion, and rhythm. Even while doing the usual portraits of individual creatures. I’ve been touching on this kind of of montage at life drawing lately.
Can you see how the figures of the birds have a rhythm and movement across the page?
As we go left to right from owl, to eagle, to owl, to crow – the placement of the heads is in a subconscious ‘bobbing’ rhythm. The lesser birds, serve as contrasting notes. Little arrows pointing in different directions, to bounce the eye around the overall mass. At the same time, the figures rotate – from the frontal snowy owl to the profile of the crow.
Maybe it’s just me, but this is the stuff I like in these weird drawings. None of it was intentional. It just began to happen as I was sketching.
To me, a key thing is the use of ‘gaze’ in the composition. That is – where the subjects are looking.
Students will often find it hard to organize a montage. I tell them it can be as simple as making sure everyone is looking in the same direction.
The viewer will always want to move in the same direction as the subject’s gaze.
Here we have two groups. A smaller cluster of birds that look left, but the larger group looks stage-right.
They tie together by having the dove’s wings clearly pointing you towards the wolf’s head. This makes a fun composition with a push-and-pull that I feel keeps you out of the messy bits in the center – where the overlap of forms isn’t all that well handled.
It’s also fun how most of these critters are so attentive to something off-screen. But a few of the less prominent ones make eye contact with the viewer.
Again, I don’t know if anyone else sees these ideas in the drawings. But it was a lot of fun to play these mind-games while composing with creatures.
And – there’s a hilarious sense of risk – something like playing Jenga.
Every time I overlap an animal on top of the pile, I get more and more nervous I will ruin the composition. I have to push myself to keep adding until the page is full :)
Check out this step-by-step progression as an example of how I hang smaller figures off of the main character. (Click for slideshow).
I wish I had been braver with the colored sketches today. I feel they lack the complexity of the line drawings I’d done earlier. But this is how I learn. Poking at things, pushing out in various directions a little bit at a time.
It takes a while for me to realize what’s working. Next time I head to the museum, I’ll be ready to push this further!
Citizen Sketcher 
