1 Week : 100 People
Way back when I was planning my Craftsy.com class Sketching People in Motion, I gave myself a challenge to draw 100 people in a week. I carried a small book ( a 3×5″ Moleskine Cahier Journal) and two pens in my pocket everywhere I went for a week. (Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen, Super Fine and a Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen).
If you commit yourself to sketching every time you see someone holding still for a few minutes – it’s actually fairly easy to get 100 drawings in 5 days.
I was getting the most out of riding the subway, but just going shopping or to a restaurant will give you good opportunities. Bookstores turn out to be great. People in there are usually moving slowly and distracted with their browsing. Perfect subjects!
I used inexpensive little books, so I didn’t care if I messed up a page, or if the subject walked away in the middle of a drawing. I would say I had about a failure 1 out of 5 times – mostly from the person abruptly leaving – sometimes from overworking the drawing.
I think of these self assigned challenges as play time. Drawing as a sport. It’s like trying to beat your personal best time doing a marathon. Can I do this? How fast can I do it? If 100 was possible – could I get 500 in a week? That’s about 16 people an hour over a 6 hour day. It might be possible! I’d have to spend all day downtown for 5 full days – sticking to places with lots of people around. Maybe I could arrange a week in New York and do it in Times Square. I’d need to have enough paper and pens with me to never run out. I’d have to plan breaks in good sketching cafes. See? I’m already getting excited.
That’s a ridiculous example – but even if you failed, it would be a glorious failure.
Why not try your own drawing challenge? Set a time/quantity goal – and use that to break through any obstacles of perfectionism or ‘sketchers block’. Make it something short – one week is a lot – and have fun even if you don’t reach the goal – it’s the doing that matters!
And – if you’ve been debating taking my Sketching People in Motion online course <<< that page will give you my blog-readers discount!
Lachine Painters Demo
The other day I was invited out to the Lachine Painters to do a watercolor demo. Thanks very much to Martha Markowsky for orchestrating this opportunity! I used a reference photo from one of my favorite sketching locations in Sao Paulo. Here’s the original sketchbook version – done in 15 or 20 minutes on a whirlwind sketching day with Liz Steel before the USK workshop last year.
The Lachine group had a great setup where the audience could see what I was doing in the mirror behind my head. Very useful. I didn’t have to talk looking back over my shoulder.
As well, Elaine (picture right) provided a simultaneous translation into French. I’m sure that’s quite hard to do – much beyond my ability. Thanks very much Elaine!
It was a neat surprise to meet Terry Mosher (center, looking at my book!) – who has sketched political commentary under the pen name Aislin for as long as I can remember. I have always admired editorial sketching – I don’t even like to call it cartooning – but I suppose they have embraced the term.
I’ve never been informed enough to take it up as a practice myself. Perhaps it will be my next career? It’s on the list of ways to utilize my drawing skills :) We’ll see what life brings.
~m
I have had a generous offer to be a guest artist at Galerie Farfelu in Westmount.
My friends Lydia and Marin are showing their gold and sliver jewellery, and have offered me the wall space in their show. We’ll be there Tuesday June 2 for the opening, or you can see the works in the window anytime between June 1-14.
If you remember these from awhile back – they are quite a departure from my usual watercolors. But in a way – they are an attempt to paint oils like a watercolorist :) In big areas of wet in wet!
If you get a chance to see them in person, you might enjoy the effect.
Last weekend was the USK sketchcrawl on Mount Royal, as well as the Vernissage for the exhibition. Seeing everyone’s work in person reminded me how much we miss looking at art online. Much of the work in the show is in large formats or with texture and fine detail that is lost in web-sized photographs. It’s great to be able to see it all up close.
The show is up for one more weekend. You can still enjoy a day of art on the mountain May 30/31.
We had a great turnout – I’m going to guess 40 people came for sketching, including some folks from Ottawa and from Vermont, and our own far flung areas – Hudson, Laval, etc.
This is the thing I love best about the urban sketching movement. How it brings people together from all over, to enjoy a day of drawing.
Thanks to everyone who came out to volunteer!
I’m sure the visiting sketchers had a great experience, having all our local USK’ers on hand to show their work-in-progress and share their sketchbooks. For a while there, the vernissage had a ‘kitchen party’ feeling, with everyone crowded in the side room around a big table of the days sketches.
There is talk of doing this show again for next year – so maybe you’ll make a sketch in the park this summer!
~m
I’m excited to announce my first watercolor workshop of 2016 – in Alvor, Portugal!
We’re offering this event in partnership with Going Places Together.com and The Art District Gallery of Kitchener / Waterlooo.
This workshop will be a mix of days painting on location in Alvor and nearby Portimao, and day-tripping with a camera or sketchbook. I’ll be doing plenty of demos, and offering suggested exercises teaching you to travel light, paint quickly, and capture the world in spontaneous, colorful sketches!
Some key concepts we’ll cover:
- Composition and design – focal point, gradient of interest,
- Seeing the painting as silhouette shapes,
- Direct sketching in watercolor – painting wet-on-dry,
- Color mixing and paint viscosity,
- Making color variation, warm and cool, charging in, and color notes,
- Edge control – hard and soft edges of wet shapes,
- and calligraphic brushwork for fine details.
Click over to my workshops page for the full details.
Please note: In order to insure the best experience for everyone, there is only space for 15 artists. We are looking to get your registration before August 31, 2015 in order to book accommodations in advance. Thanks! ~m
Join us on the Mountain this Sunday May 24th
This Sunday May 24th is the open sketching event associated with the Draw Me a Mountain Exhibition. Everyone is welcome, just bring your pens and sketchbook. We will be going ahead no matter what the weather – even if there is rain, we’ll be under the eaves of the buildings :)
Meet at the Smith House at 10 AM, and will have sketchers at scenic spots throughout the day. At 3PM we’ll meet back at the Smith House to enjoy the sketching exhibition and show off the drawings we have done that day.
See you there! Please join us to do some drawing of our mountain!
Spring in the Cemetery
At the time of writing, it’s been a very dry spring. It’s looking more like second fall around here. The Noodler’s Red Black and Rome Burning I’ve been using lately are really helping with that fall color feeling.
Here’s some sketches from the smaller of our neighborhood cemeteries: Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.
These are sketched in a Moleskine Folio Watercolor Album, (11.75 x 8.25″) – which is a beautiful book, with this very wide format. But it is frankly just a little bit too large for every day use. It takes up a lot of room in a bag, and I’d definitely consider a backing board and bulldog clips to hold it open when drawing. It wants to flop around, fall off my knees, or otherwise behave badly. I’m starting to think that a book bigger than you can easily hold in one hand calls for an easel for sketching. But if I was going to do that I’d just paint rather than sketch.
Still – it is a beautiful book, and will look very nice when filled :)
Philadelphia!
Just some doodles from a drive-through trip to Philly. I’m out of town right now, working on a secret sketching project I hope to be able to announce soon. Back in a couple of days! ~m
One Day : One Sketchbook : The Plateau Panoramas
This past May Day was the first alignment of great weather and time off I’ve had in Montreal for 2015. I met up with a couple of friends from USK, and spent the afternoon sketching in the Plateau.
I was playing around with an accordion sketchbook – a 5×8.5″ format book with a single sheet of folded paper, forming a long ‘continuous’ ribbon of paper. (It’s not really a single piece. There are some glued seams in the paper – but you don’t really notice them). I got this specially made one at USK Barcelona – not sure where to really buy them in watercolor paper like this. There is a Mokeskine in this format – but I prefer a real water paper – sooooo – might have to make my own.
My goal was to try to make a really big panorama drawing, going the entire length of the book. I started my first sketch early and made it just over halfway before I had to relocate to meet the others.
This first drawing was done by moving down Sherbrooke and adding buildings as I moved west. I’m purposely not worrying about a ‘correct’ point of view. Each ‘block’ of buildings is in its own perspective and scale – but it adds up to a kind of floating view that zooms in on whatever interesting bits there are to see.
The second half of the book is drawn in Square Saint Louis. We were sitting in the middle of the park, so it was natural to stay in one place and wrap a 180 degree arc of view around the fountain centrepiece. Well, it’s meant to be in the center, but I sort of ran out of book. So half the arc is a little squished – but hey, this was just for fun so I’m not complaining.
The real goal for this day was to just be out in the sun, having fun drawing. No bothersome perspective, no measuring for accuracy, no particular care with color. Just using loopy Single Line Sketches and very vaguely thinking about Post and Rail Panoramas – but not in any disciplined way.
I was sort of challenging myself to see if I could make it to the end of the book – I like to have a little game, or goal post for each day. Turned out not to be that hard at all. There are only 11 spreads in this book (+ endpapers).
When you give yourself permission to use up a lot of paper, you can do it pretty fast. This was all done cover-to-cover in about 4 hours on location, with another hour-ish at home to touch up some color. There’s still the back side of the accordion to fill up someday – but I think this is fair enough for an afternoon’s fun and games :)
Noodler’s Ink: Not so Waterproof after all
Jaret Kupcinsky, Ian Bowden @ JKPP
I’ve recently been testing inks – looking for a good set of waterproof colors.
These portraits above, (done from people on the JKPP Flickr group) are Noodler’s Red Black and Rome Burning. The Noodler’s specification chart lists Red Black as ‘partially’ water resistant and Rome Burning as fully water resistant. Bulletproof even.
And for my control group, one in straight up Platinum Carbon Ink, Black (which I know is rock-solid-waterproof), next to Pilot’s Iroshizuku Kiri-Same.
Luis Vigil, Pat Hayes @ JKPP
I don’t find the Kiri-Same to be sufficiently different from black to be worth bringing another pen along. So this was a good test, but I won’t be bothering with grey ink. I do plan to use the colors. I’ve ordered a pair of Noodler’s Ahab Flex pens in appropriate colored barrels for the red and gold ink :)
These particular drawings were done with a Blue Pumpkin dip nip, and ink sample vials from Goulet Pens. If I had realized Goulet was in Richmond, I would have stopped by when I was in town!
I have however, found a Canadian company. Wonderpens.ca out of Toronto. So I can now get pens and ink without paying duty. *Winning*!
So here’s what you’d expect with washing watercolor over a waterproof ink drawing. Color does its thing, lines stay put.
These are on Strathmore Bristol (smooth) and tinted with DS Potters Pink, Naples Yellow, a touch of Quinn Gold Deep and some Moonglow. A limited palette that can serve for caucasian-ish skin. Incidentally – I am not very impressed with Potters pink as a pigment. The Daniel Smith tube I tried was inordinately weak and seemed unusually poorly mixed with the binder. I will be binning that directly.
Now here are the Red Black and Rome Burning. Painted with the same colors.
Neat hey?
So, we’ve established that Noodler’s claims these inks are at least partially water resistant. I’d say that is 100% true about 20% of the time.
I was expecting a little more resistance than this. Maybe it would be nice to see 70-80% line – holding. But in fact they both give out a tremendous amount of color even though one is “partial” and the other “bulletproof”.
So I have not found a set of waterproof inks – but I have found a new variation on water soluble drawing :) I’ve always done washable drawings with Lamy black ink and enjoyed the neutralizing effect it offers. Now, I am very much liking the color cast I can give to a drawing.
Here’s one last test, done on Canson Montval 140lb cold pressed. Just to see if it was only the smooth Bristol causing the wash-out. If anything, the ink traveled further on this coated watercolor stock.
Pretty great effect hey! I think I’ll be doing more with this.
Cristina Urdiales @JKPP
Citizen Sketcher 