Singapore Symposium in Pictures
Here’s some great memories from this year’s USK symposium in Singapore. Laurel’s posted loads more photos on her flickr, if you don’t see yourself here. I’ve heard next year will be hosted by USK Manchester. We’re looking forward to it. Will be my first visit to the UK.
Pregame Sketchcrawl in Kampong Glam
Sketching with Jane Blundel in the Chinese Garden
Sketchers Everywhere you Go!
USK Workshops
Field Testing a Steel Brush
The other day we finally made it to Quebec City. We’ve been living in Montreal for about five years now, but for whatever reason, it took us this long to visit.
For our first trip, I wanted to hit the obvious highlights – the old town around the Château Frontenac. A lot of people feel they should go out of their way to find unique, undiscovered views in any town. Me, I tend to go right for the postcard view. I feel that given a limited amount of time, I want to start with the most recognizable spot, and move outward from there. I don’t know I’m that committed to this as a strategy, but it’s how I’m doing it for now.
We had arranged to meet up with a friend of ours – inveterate sketcher, Larry D. Marshall who knows the city from the pages of his own sketchbooks. He walked us over to this perfect view of the cupola on the old post office. Larry’s a loyal reader of my blog, so I think he knows I’ll sketch any dome I can lay my eyes on :)
This is actually a double-page spread – here’s the sketch combined with its other half making the panorama across the square.
These drawings are in a big 15×20” pad of Canson Montval. I made sure to bring large format paper, as I wanted to play with a 3/8” size Steel Brush. Which, as you can probably tell from the sketch, is a big huge nib. I mean – this drawing looks normal in proportion – but it’s 30” across.
The steel brush is a rectangular sandwich of thin sheets of metal, each layer with a pattern of slots. When dipped, ink clings between the sheets of flexible metal, making a juicy reservoir of color.
I’ve had a few of these nibs in the back of a drawer for 20 years. I think I inherited them from an uncle. Unless I picked them up when I worked in an art supply store back in college. In any case – I’ve had them for a long, long time, and never had the nerve to draw with them. I had a 3/4” with me as well, but amusingly, it was too wide to fit down the neck of the 5ml ink bottles I carry.
So – these are only my first few drawings with this nib – I have to say – I really like it! The nib holds a lot of ink and can make broad and juicy strokes – as if you’re working with a watercolor flat – but somehow it’s a scratchy, springy, metallic flat. And, just like a watercolor flat, you can draw with the corners and the front edge, instead of the broad width. You get these weird wedgy cuneiform shapes, as well as some jagged slender-line work.
[If you order a Speedball Steel Brush on Amazon.usa I get a small kickback – thx!]
[Note: I see these are cheaper on Dick Blick]
Occasionally the leaves of the nib will catch on the paper and fling a spray of ink drops. I like this. I’m a huge fan of tools that put you on the edge of control. It’s more fun to draw with them. I get bored if my materials are too predictable. The drawing should be an interaction between you and the media.
This last one from Place Royale – a scenic little square in the heart of the old town – has some fun effects. I wonder if anyone can guess how I got these effects?
I know we’ll be back to Quebec city sometime. There’s plenty more to draw. And I’m sure i’ll be playing with this pen some more – I’ll have to keep you updated. It might be interesting to try it with watercolor for instance. I’ll see what kind of fun and games I can get up to next time I have a day off to play with it.
Three Pointed Questions for Reportage Artist Richard Johnson
I interviewed reportage artist Richard Johnson back in 2013, talking about his work sketching on location with various military elements in Afghanistan. He has since moved from Toronto’s National Post onto the Washington Post in Washington DC, where he continues to be a fascinating sketcher, taking on the hardest of topics.
Having spent the spring drawing an in-depth reportage of the trial of Tsarnaev Dzhokar (Boston marathon bomber), he has returned home with his sketchbook to address the issue of homelessness in DC.
This is a social problem that’s clearly familiar to any urban dweller. But one we are conditioned to ignore. There are so many perfectly good reasons to pass by a homeless person with eyes averted. Everything from shared embarrassment to reasonable caution. We don’t know these people. We’re worried about their mental state. Few of us want to engage face to face. As an introvert myself, I hardly ever talk to any strangers – never mind people who are in quiet crisis.
As always, Johnson pushes himself past these reasonable concerns. He has a compulsion to get up close and personal. Giving us his keenly observed portraits, accompanied by the subject’s own words.
As a location sketcher myself, but not someone who has faced these kinds of raw stories, I’m fascinated with his work. It’s the kind of drawing challenge that many artists think about taking on. So I took a chance to ask him three pointed questions that might help those of us who are thinking about this kind of work. His answers were of course on point, and revealing.
MTH: Richard, thanks for sharing your reportage on the homeless in DC. I like the fact you talk about how difficult it was to engage with people. That they’re not necessarily willing to be drawn. It’s an interesting topic for a sketcher.You start the project by sketching people at a distance – would it be fair to say you were dodging the issue of getting permission at first, before eventually finding a way into the story?
R.J.: I think what we do as urban sketchers is by its very nature a kind of documentary voyeurism. We draw our own worlds because we want to show them to others, but do it long enough and eventually you end up in some gritty corner drawing graffiti scrawled on some decayed building. You are sketching it not because this is something that you would choose to show others, but because it is something that needs to be shown. That is how I got to the point where I was surreptitiously drawing the homeless.
MTH: Do you have any thoughts on the ethics of drawing without consent? Is it a dicey thing – or do you feel you’re on the moral high ground making these drawings? Do you feel it’s any different ethically for a reporter than for a hobby-sketcher?
R.J.: This is always a thorny question and one that many of us grapple with especially in this changing privacy conscious world. As a visual documentarian though, I consider it my responsibility to capture life in its purest and most natural state. That is why we urban sketchers draw what we see – not what we’d like to see, or what we have staged, or what we took a photo of. The capturing of life while immersed in the same moment as the subjects we draw raises the art we create beyond anything created from a photograph. So in my opinion, if your intentions are pure and your mind is set only on the need to draw what you see, then it makes no difference whether you are drawing buildings or people. You are capturing your world.
MTH: Have you ever faced questions about using people’s difficult situations to promote yourself? (Bear in mind, I’m on your side!) – but I’m curious about the issues around a reportage artist drawing public attention to their sketches while working with people’s true-life stories.
R.J.: As much as I love our Urban Sketchers group, I believe that there is much more we could all be doing with our skills. We have an organization that stretches all around the planet and an artistic device that affects people deeply. I think that we should all be looking for opportunities to tell the hard stories. I think we are beginning to see this happen. Some of the artwork, of devastation inside Syria, and of refugees across Europe in the last year has been particularly telling in changing public attitudes.
But more to your question, personally, journalistically I never want to be even vaguely perceived as taking from someone in pain in order to promote myself. I am the lens only. There are of course situations where I would not be able to draw without requesting permission first. My work with wounded warriors over the last decade depended on a high degree of trust and acceptance. And sometimes written permission was even necessary in order that there is a clear understanding. But regardless of the paperwork or trust gaining, my own motivation remains the same. I want to tell stories and change minds using pictures and words.
This is a power that we all have IF we choose to use it.
–
To read Richard’s full story, and see the rest of the drawings, please head over to his Washington Post article Drawing the Invisible. You can also follow his blog at NewsIllustrator.com, or follow Richard on twitter.
USK:MTL : Sketching Atwater Market
We had perfect lazy Sunday weather for today’s USK:MTL monthly sketching meetup. I was doing more talking than drawing today so we have a little bit of everything going on in the sketchbook. Thanks to everyone who showed up. It was fun meeting a lot of new people today.
A view of the canal – in an unusual (for me) vertical composition, thanks to a suggestion from my friend Shari. We were sitting side by side. She sketched the view 90 degrees to mine.
Here’s what we were really looking at. I was kind of happy with my redesign of what was there. Less is almost always more in a quick sketch.
A quick sketcher portrait. I don’t know this person, so if you’re the lady in the red coat who left early, this is you concentrating on your sketch :)
And, after lunch the Phil So Good quartet set up (only three of them for whatever reason?) and we all hung out and sketched them while they played for us.
DVD Review: James Gurney’s Gouache in the Wild
James Gurney, plein air painter, art educator, illustrator, and Rube-Goldberg-Easel-Maker has recently released another of his instructional DVDs on field sketching. Gouache in the Wild is a 72 minute art instructional video, available by digital download, or on DVD.
This video is a natural follow-up to his earlier release Watercolor in the Wild. The two make a good companion set. Considering his preferred method of using opaque water-based gouache over a loose and colorful under painting, one can see how everything learned from the previous watercolor program could be used in tandem with what we learn here today.
Gouache in the Wild presents multiple small paintings (six in total) which you watch in jump cuts taking you in compressed time from the initial drawings through key points in the process, onto the finished work. Each small sketch is painted entirely on location, taking us to a variety of subjects – landscape, urban settings, and some unique still-life situations.
We get to see plenty of footage of his careful brushwork in real time – seeing how he advances the image methodically. Like other great painters I have seen, Gurney ‘goes slow to go fast’. He is never rushed, every stroke well considered and placed with skill. Every color mixed once, and placed down without fussing. As he never seems to make a mistake, no time is wasted guessing a color or fixing a brush stroke. It’s really quite remarkable to see. This is a thinking person’s painting!
There is enough time spent showing close-ups of the palette to see his mixing. As well, we get lots of shots of his portable easel and various ‘tricks of the plein air trade’. Always helpful to see an artist’s setup. Plus we get frequent breaks to find out more about art materials. Intercut with the painting progress, Gurney lectures about the history and properties of gouache, the best brushes and paint brands, and the colors he chooses.
The take away here is Gurney’s passion for the potential of this under-utilized medium. He is here to demonstrate how gouache can offer you all the advantages of opaque painting in oils or acrylics, but in a fast drying, clean and portable, water-soluble media that is highly suited to working on location, sketch-booking and the small studies which many painters enjoy on location.
As a ‘mostly purist’ watercolorist I have often wished for the ability to return a lost highlight, or insert some skyholes into foliage. Even if you don’t intend to adopt gouache as a full time medium, there’s a lot of good examples here leading towards a mixed media approach.
Gouache in the Wild is independently produced by James and his wife Jeanette. Purchases go directly to supporting his art practice, his blogging, and future releases of more videos.
~m
Sketching Rodin at the Montreal Fine Arts
This summer the MFA here in Montreal has been featuring an exhibition of sculptures by Auguste Rodin. (On until October 18).
The show is titled Metamorphoses: In Rodin’s Studio, and in keeping with that theme, it features a collection of fascinating smaller works and sculptural fragments, mostly presented as plaster casts.
It seems, the way the show’s curators present the work, that these small models were Rodin’s real passion. I would like to think so – they seem so full of energy and keen observation – as compared to the bombastic bronzes made for the courthouse steps.
There are of course monolithic figures as well. The famous Thinker, as well as figures from The Burghers of Calais. And this standing nude. Possibly it is Meditation: The Inner Voice. I can’t recall the title. But this one caught my eye. The stretched neck and classically antique severed arms are an ongoing theme in Rodin’s work.
But it was smaller works that drew my attention. I didn’t even look at the Thinker. To me, it’s been rendered uninteresting – conceptually buried by thousands of copies, editorial cartoons, and humorous t-shirts. Much like the unfortunate fate of the Mona Lisa.
These exciting smaller works are, I suppose, studies. Temporary works in clay, from which moulds have been taken, allowing the artist to make a plaster cast for use in the studio, or – when he had something noteworthy, these casts might be copied into marble or re-cast into bronze.
One room of the show is dedicated to what Rodin called “Coupes et Fleurs” (translated as Vessels and Flowers). In these, he combines ‘authentic’ classical objects – small clay jars and cups purchased from antique dealers – with fragments of statuary. Some do resemble vases and flowers. Some appear to be bathers. In others, the pale plaster figures rise out of the jars like incense smoke.
Later in the exhibition we see a series of charming arrangements, in which he combines broken fragments of plasters into new works. Using the head from one study on a torso of another, combining figures in interesting juxtapositions. Making new stories out of old.
This kind of playful re-combination of his leftover works seems like a very contemporary idea for the turn of the century.
My personal favorite of the show is a set of copies of his infamous Iris, Messagère des Dieu. (Iris, Messenger of God). As I recall, there was one in stone, and one in bronze on exhibition.
It is impossible to look at this piece from 1895 without thinking of The Origin of the World by Courbet (1866).
At this time, with the movement away from the baroque and towards truth and naturalism in art, it was inevitable that male artists would produce these sort of frank depictions of the female body.
Once these artists, academicians and rogues alike, give themselves permission to seek personal obsessions – rather than continue to serve up re-heated bible stories or historical propaganda – then the confrontationally eroticized nude seems unavoidable.
It can’t be denied, even to a modern audience, Rodin, and Corbet before him, are leveraging tremendous conceptual power by breaking social taboos. This supercharged exhibition of the body made for a lot of headlines. Any publicity is good publicity.
Friendly critics could call it a celebration of female power. Less compliant feminist analysts might see Rodin as the patriarch – appropriating the female body, using it for his own aggrandizement, and the titillation of his clients.
No matter how you react to the sculpture – it’s a striking piece – the most impactful in the show. Demonstrating both total mastery of modelling, and Rodin’s daring as an artist.
It is interesting that this too is one of his recycled works. I am reading on the Musee-Rodin site that the Iris figure was taken from a swooping angel-winged version of the Messenger – now turned right side up, and exposed with the contortionist’s flexibility of Rodin’s favorite models.
I cannot find (with a quick search) a confirmed account of who the model was – but even if this was a re-used torso, the sculpted limbs and splayed pose must surely have been done from life.
For sketching fans, here’s a look at my process. These sketches were drawn in a Moleskine Folio Watercolor Album (11.75×8.25”) while in the exhibit, using fountain pen and water soluble ink. Then painted off-site with a small watercolor kit. I’m impressed the museum does not restrict us to sketching in pencil, but of course, you have to leave the exhibit to paint. The drawings couldn’t have taken much more than five or ten minutes, most even less. Making it possible to draw standing without unduly blocking people in the crowded exhibit.
Of particular interest here is the (new to me) pigment Graphite Gray (Pbk #10). Used very wet, with a loaded brush in the shadows – most visible in Iris, and Meditation. I’m very much liking this extremely sedimentary silvery grey. It really does look like pencil or graphite stick, in watercolor form. I think it would be an ideal color to take to any major metropolitan area.
Other colors in this mini-kit: DS Moonglow, Quinn Gold Deep, Cobalt Teal, Perlyne Maroon, and Indigo.
~m
The Hand Drawn Snapshot
I show a lot of ‘nice’ sketches on this blog. What I consider finished works. Things where I took a reasonable amount of time (45 minutes? an hour?). And things that often call for an easel and a watercolor kit. Today I wanted to show the opposite. Sketches that took 5 minutes or less. Drawn in a cheap 3×5″ pocket book with flimsy paper.
Sometimes when you’re travelling, you’re not in the mood for carrying your gear. Or you’re with people, and you don’t feel like asking everyone to wait for you. That’s when I go into snapshot mode. Drawing standing with two pens (my current favorites: a Platinum Carbon pen, and a Kuretake Sumi brushpen). Often I don’t even stop walking – getting the first few lines in, then doodling from memory while walking away. It doesn’t take any longer than pausing to take a photo. And I enjoy the feeling of filling up these tiny sketchbooks. The drawings are so fast, you can easily fill a book in an afternoon.
I enjoy these little booklets as keepsakes of the trip, and as small studies that I might paint from later. I might just take a detail – a boat I liked, or the shape of a palm tree, into a future studio painting. Mostly though, I just do them for the pure fun of it. Even if I never look back at them, every drawing builds your visual memory. Just like taking snapshots – probably they just go into your albums and lurk on your computer (or on my bookshelf) – but the act of taking them is a way of looking deeper at a place. It makes for lasting memories. And maybe when I’m old(er), those albums will come back out again. Who knows!
You can see the ‘for real’ paintings from this trip to Florida over here, and some more over here.
~m
Sketching Characters at Montreal’s 18th Century Market
Every year the Pointe-a-Calliere museum takes over their corner of Montreal’s old port to put on the 18th century New France marketplace.
It’s always a great opportunity for USK:MTL to get together and sketch.
I imagine most people have some sort of costumed re-enactors group in their area? These guys above are the Compagnie du 2e Battalion du Régiment de la Sarre.
You might want to scout around your own area online. Many cities have some sort of military re-enactors, a local crew of pirates, or a medieval history group. I highly recommend this sort of thing for a fun afternoon sketching characters in fancy dress – and an opportunity to draw as much as you like without your subjects running off. (Not that they won’t move, but at least they’ll stay in the area :).
If anyone else has sketches from costumed events (or might be a re-enactor themselves?) – why not post a link to your drawings in the comments – and tell us when and where the event takes place. Maybe there are some people in your area that will turn up for the next event – sketchbooks at the ready!
For the artists out there, these are sketched in pencil while walking around following my subjects, and tinted with watercolor during lunch and teatime. I skipped drawing in pen and ink over the pencil as I sometimes do. These days I’m tending to do either pencil + color or straight-to-ink + color – but rarely all three, pencil and ink and color.
Even though I do recommend all three when teaching beginners, after a few years of thinking about this, I feel it drains some ‘freshness’ (and slows you down) if you do too much drawing before the paint.
So – as you get more comfortable, you can skip one step – and just get more drawings done in the session :)
~m
Painting Underwater in Singapore
[Chinese Garden, Jurong, 9×24″]
Let me just say – Singapore was nothing like what I expected.
This is entirely because I’m uneducated, and had no idea what to expect.
Other than it being a modern Asian city with a booming economy. And a democratic republic with a pretty decent reputation for transparency. What I was not really aware of (being basically clueless) was how multicultural it would be.
It was inspiring to see temples of three religions side by side on ‘harmony streets’. Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu all equally well used by a variety of people. It was equally great to see every hawker center (open air restaurant courts) representing ethnic foods from all these cultures. And then to see, in the faces of the people on the street, all these races intermixed.
I would hope this could just be normal everywhere – but it seemed to me a unique aspect of the city. Good for you Singapore! Thanks for that experience :)
[Japanese Pavilion at the Chinese Garden, Jurong, 9×24″]
The other thing that completely overturned expectations was the fact you cannot paint in Singapore.
Well – eventually you can adapt. And certainly the locals can paint just fine. But I for one, found it to be the most challenging environment of any place I’ve ever watercolored. It reminded me most of that time I painted in the rain in Ithaca.
The challenge was not because of difficult subject matter or any lack of views – but simply because of the climate. The HUMIDITY. (And the heat). But my goodness – the HUMIDITY.
You might see a kind of wild abandon in the painting style on display here? A kind of splashy wet-in-wet and a sort of ‘mosaic’ feeling? Shapes floating on white spaces, a kind of composition that is perhaps on the edge of control? This is my compromise for the shocking conditions we encountered.
Simply put: watercolor will not dry in 100% humidity and 110 degrees.
I suppose the up-side is you have as much time as you like to work wet-into-wet. I had paper remain wet for over four hours. When you made a painting, you had to carry it flat for the rest of the day or colors would actually drip off the page. Some days I ended up only doing two paintings, needing to drop them off at the hotel between outings. My usual method of working larger-to-smaller and wetter-to-dryer in progressive layers, was simply off the table. If I’d have been working in a sketchbook, I imagine all the pages would be stuck together.
[The Sultan Mosque, Kampong Glam, 9×24″]
So – these works are not done in layers at all – but are made working edge-to-edge, stroke next to stroke, in a single wet shape. They are more reliant than ever on white space – defining shapes with dry paper edges.
I think I gravitated to this fix for the weather because I was just back from filming: Travel Sketching in Mixed Media.
If you look back to the previous post on the Brush pen silhouette exercise where I’m talking about shape welding and ‘growing silhouettes’ with black ink. This is exactly what’s going on here:) It’s amazing how descriptive you can be even with just black ink. You’re training yourself to make shapes with solid masses, and to be decisive about what you leave out. The small gaps and edges in the brushwork – the negative shapes – can be equally descriptive as the positive forms. All of these works, especially the Mosque above, are done with this kind of thinking – but with watercolor instead of ink.
I’m glad I filmed the class before going to Asia :) Thinking about teaching something, is the best way to get better at doing it. If I didn’t have this concept in my back pocket, I’d have been one frustrated sketch-tourist in Singapore.
[Giant Super Tree Sculptures at Gardens by the Bay, 9×24″]
Here’s a sneak peek at the second concept in my new video class Travel Sketching in Mixed Media.
The course starts with the slightly more obvious approach of doing line drawings and tinting them with color. Then, by taking a look at the *opposite* way of thinking – building up from silhouette shapes instead of line – we can start to think about how a tonal sketch might work. To me, when they say painterly – this is what they mean. Thinking about masses of value, rather than linear contour.
In the course I go into a few ways to arrive at a study in shapes – the solid masses you can do with a brush pen, but also the accumulation of different line weights you can make with pen-hatching.
And finally, closing that section I show a sketch done with water soluble ink – in which you do a bit of both. Making a line drawing that you convert to masses by blending shapes with water. You can do this right on the spot, or come back later with the water.
I hope you’ll get a little something from each of the three ways to think about silhouettes and masses. This approach has been very useful for me on my recent trip to Asia – I’ll show you some more of that in the next few days :)
If you’re interested in joining the class to see the sketching happen, I have a special discount ($20 off the retail price!) for anyone reading this blog. Click over here to register at your Blog Reader’s Discount!
Citizen Sketcher 