Sketching at the Beach

Sketching live people, out and about doing their thing, has been a challenge I've generally shied from. Just too hard. My friend Ethna helped me rethink this a few months back when she told me she really enjoyed the challenge of capturing people in action quickly. It made me think if capturing a perfectly still building in 45 mins felt satisfying, how satisfying would it be to get a likeness of someone in 5 - 10 mins?  But then on seeing her lovely sketches from cafes and the streets my nerve was gone again.

 

Then 2 weeks ago, Cesar aka Eclectic Box, an urban sketcher from Barcelona, launched the wonderful blog 'Portraits without Mercy'. A collaborative blog of posts by sketchers of sketchers, but with portraits "that voluntarily or not show a complete lack of kindness or affection towards the portrayed subject" (including self portraits). Very funny and very inspiring. 

 

A sense of humour and ability to laugh at oneself is I'm guessing a strong prerequisite as subjects can return the complement of an unflattering portrait, with a responding post of the artist on the same blog.  Ultimately though, the recognition that a likeness does not have to be pretty or attractive to have value or expression is great to see. The concept is liberating in itself. That someone has created a blog for just that purpose is fabulous. So on the beach yesterday, I gave away the idea of getting things just right and being hesitant, and instead just enjoyed the process.

Returning to classes with Liz Steel

Liz Steel is running classes to revisit fundamentals touched on in the first course.  But even in that month or so off from focusing on learning, not just sketching for the sake of it, my mind had rusted. So for the first week, apart from the planned lesson itself, through my own frustration I received another about slowing down, really looking hard and not just making assumptions about the subject.. and then finally to live with it, get over it and move on (very helpful to have a teacher who reminds us to not let stress or worry over a result ruin the joy of creating it in the first place).

 

This weeks class had a much happier outcome. We focussed on studies firstly with line work and hatching and then repeated the same subject using watercolour for form, tone and shadows.

 

 

This was a really good way of firstly understanding the subject with the lines and then shaking off the confines of that first sketch and being able to let that go and relax more with the paints. Added to this we had the most beautiful weather and spent the whole class outside at Balmoral Beach under the shade of the Rotunda and then the huge fig trees. A great upside of sketching on location when the weather is nice!

 

Our class is having a lot of fun discussing the expressive lines and work of talent such as Veronica Lawler and Nathalie Ramirez . Their use of colour and line is so full of life. I've started to experiment a little this weekend with coloured linework and brighter pigment mixes. Referring to a black and white photo of Frida Kahlo I first sketched her in  pale blue fineliner (happy to find my pack of Staedtelr Triplus fineliners are fairly water resistant), added the main features in with my Lamy and then celebrated with lots more fineliner and watercolour. Loved the effects of bright pigments mixing in puddles of water.

Play time. Week 8 of Liz Steel's sketch course.

Another fun day, but tinged with a little sadness that it was our last class. What a term we've had. Liz has taught us so much and continued to encourage us constantly throughout the duration of the course. There's been a shift in my sketching and the intensity of colour used , but I also recognise a change in confidence and my willingness to tackle things I would not previously try.

  

 

 

 

For our cafe sketch this week we went to Chica Bonita - a lively little restaurant in Manly with wonderful decor, music, vibe, food, drink, lighting. Everything just right for getting us to play. I ordered a watermelon margarita to further aid the loosening of the lines and decided to draw it against the backdrop of the tiles from the table and next to a feature from the wall. This sketch incorporates every bit of play technique I could remember from the earlier studio discussion - sketching with watercolour pencils, using a white chinagraph pencil (it resists the watercolour paint), salt (from my margarita glass), scraping wet paint with the credit card, white gel pen, wet on wet colours, splashing and most of all remembering not to be too serious about the outcome.

 

Thanks once more to Liz, its been a great learning experience. You can read more about this weeks class here on her blog.

 

Links to my posts on the earlier classes:

Week 1

Weeks 2 & 3

Weeks 4 & 5

Weeks 6 & 7

 

Colour.

I've been heavily reliant on a technical knowledge of watercolours, colour mixing, colour wheels etc that was learnt in about grade 4 (about 10 years old?) and not greatly developed since then. It's been a wonderful way to work and play. Frankly, I have enjoyed being naive about certain things because there is a level of freedom to it. As if I can't be held responsible for creating better watercolour work due to my ignorance of how to do it. But now I want to move on. 

 

Thankfully, surrounding this (slightly embarrassing) realisation has been the course I'm taking with Liz Steel and her fantastic knowledge, experience and ethusiasm. Liz's passion for watercolour pigments is evident in her work as well as commentary.

 

In our class we covered hue, value, intensity, cool vs warm, use of complementary colours for shadows, mixing colours, wet/damp/dry technique comparison and more. I took many notes and drew pictures and painted colours. But until I start mixing these colours and  using the techniques in sketches, repetitively, none of the newer concepts are easy for me to recall.

 

 

Pittwater Road, Manly

As part of the course we had the option of setting up our travel watercolour palettes with Liz's current favourite colours. Awesome. Now I can at least go forth with my own changes knowing I have a good platform to work from.  With a handy selection of Daniel Smith colours set into half pans, the above was my first outdoors/onsite trial of the new paints.

 

 

 

The following class focussed on buildings. Here we recalled some of what we did early on in the course in relation to form, structure, detail as well as more discussion on perspective.

 

 

 

 

We completed a few very simplified line drawings of incredible, historic, beautiful archtiecture such as Notre Dame from photos (totally gullibe to Liz's clever strategy of boosting our confidence in sketching buildings) and then headed down the Corso, to St Matthews Church. There I became engrossed in detail,  forgetting most of what she'd just taught us about keeping it simple. In order to complete the full picture - both lines and colour on site I still need to work faster. This one was coloured at home.  

 

 I've also created a colour mixing chart from my new palette.  I then set about to further absorb how my colours mix by sketching a Classic Rover from one of my photos, using predominantly just French Ultramine Blue and Burnt Umber. I snuck in some Moonglow because it looked pretty comfortable with the other two. This was really helpful for me to understand how the colours work together.

 

Hemmingway's Manly - Cafe Sketching

 

 

Another recent rainy day, another cafe sketch. This time sketching at Hemingway's Manly. I attempted for the first time to include as much of my surroundings as possible. In retrospect the effect may have been better in landscape than portrait. The masters of this style of urban sketching also manage to round the field of view a little as well - much like a fish eye, wide angle lens. Something I will have to train myself to do! Am yet to get my head around it...