Happy 4th of July!I did this in a Stillman and Birn notebook. Zeta series, with my favorite pen, Lamy Safari. Experimenting with a new set of greens and new brushes. I did this on a rush but it was fun!
urbansketcher
Some Tutorial Sheets
These handsheets were made for a past workshop for the local sketchers. They illustrate several concepts and tips for sketching
-How to draw gesture
-How to approach simplification of scenes
-The concept of Transitional Space when sketching interiors
These sheets will be available as PDFs at our urbansketchersboston Facebook group
http://www.urbansketchersboston.com
Join us if you live in New England!
Downtown Crossing
Here is an ink drawing from last year that I didn’t publish, I think..but I was happy with it. used the Lamy Safary on a Stillman and Birn notebook zeta series
Starbucks at Harvard Square
Urban Sketchers Boston had a meetup at Harvard Square, and the interior is so cozy and nice with a warm atmosphere. For this I used the Carbon Platinum fountain pen, the finest point I have ever seen on a fountain pen! and my favorite brand of notebooks Stillman and Birn, Zeta series, great for ink
The Boston Opera House
This weekend I went to the Boston Opera House and It’s such a beautiful interior ! I couldn;t resist to make a watercolor of it. The colors are so rich.
I did this is a Stillman and Birn sketchbook as usual. I recently got more art supplies and wanted to try my new brushes this is the Escoda Versatil #12. To be synthetic it’s a pretty good brush!
For the darks I used the pentel brush and I drew this not with my usual Lamy but a nib and holder.
I haven’t sketch in a while. I feel rusty but I think this came out acceptable 🙂
Wedding at Martha’s Vineyard, MA
On Sep 26, Saturday was the wedding we were hired to sketch at Martha’s Vineyard. It was quite an experience to have so many moving subjects and trying to chase-a-sketch! We managed to get a few done and some were colored afterwards. We got about a dozen done each of us in 4hrs.
I chose Stillman and Birn Zeta series notebooks for this, The hard stock takes the watercolor beautiful without warping. I used Koi watercolors, they are a little volatile but it is good to have scans so I can reprint them in their original color saturation.
The bride, young actress Julianna Gill (from Friday the 13) here with her little nephew and Dave Franco with fiance Allison Brie (from Madmen) are here in these sketches.
We didn’t realized who they were until a while later which helped in the sense of not being star struck while drawing!
It was quite stressful to try to sketch in so little time as many sketches as possible but I did learned a lot. On the next gig, if we have another one like this, I think I will apply watercolor off site if i have to work this fast because running with a wet tray and brushes, while holding a sketchbook a pen and a water container just… Doesn’t work!
Some sketches were very… “Accidental” *_* like the color one here, that sky is a bad spill… my tray fell over the sketch.
My friend Mia said that this was a gig that could break the most confident speedy sketcher! And yes when I saw my works I wanted to cry :I but I worked on them at home a little more, adding watercolor touches here and there. Some of them I didn’t have time to add color.
Tutorial on a 20 min sketch
I gave a workshop yesterday and prepared some handouts on my 20 min technique for urban renderings. Here below, is the process from beginning to end including the color wash.
There was a great attendance, I am quite happy. I presented using a sequence of panels and the second half of the time was to put all this to practice by the local Urban Sketchers Boston. It’s been two years and our group is growing. We are about 415 members to date and Christ Tritt and I run it every weekend, planning meetups and researching the local architecture to give an insight on the site prior to visit. Now with great weather, we can do more plein air workshops like this.
This demos were done in a 9″x12″ Stillman and Birn Zeta series notebook heavy stock for mixed media. The linework was done with a Lamy Safari EF. Some of the black brush strokes in the values study were done with a multiliner brush pen.
I wanted a support that could be smooth enough for fine linework, heavy ink brush strokes and take a few layered watercolor washes, so I decided to use the mixed media notebook.
One of the things I wanted to emphasize is the drying time between the watercolor wash layers. When you are working on a fast sketch, the wash has to be light so it can dry faster, most important, the base layer, as it covers about 80% of the paper (I do leave a lot of white untouched areas in the peripherals of the sketch to allow it to “breath” visually)
First layer is the lightest value of the local colors on every area, the subsequent layer is massing the main shadows, the third layer is the smaller darker areas, and the fourth layer is the accents that will enhance key areas to give it depth and good contrast.
I concentrate most of the pigment toward the horizon line and toward the center of the paper. I create interest in the focal point/area during the prior ink drawing process by doing more detail and making it visually heavy in those areas keeping the rest of the drawing very loose.
The Boston Greenway
Lunchtime at downtown greenway Boston. The sun was so bright! Yes.. Bright Sunlight is a rarity here and warm weather too. We have a long winter!
#StillmanAndBirn
Sketching on a mini pad
I take this mini pad to do sketches in our weekly meetups with Urban Sketchers Boston. It is an accordion pad that can hold 30 drawings. I love this so practical and handy. This pad was handmade by my friend Di in South Africa.
Sketchpad Project -Mini Drawings
This collection of mini drawings are 4″ x 3 1/2″ and part of a big accordion-like sketchbook with 31 squares.
Here are three more of the collection, recently made with Urban Sketchers Boston site visits
First image is one of the gallery rooms at the Museum of Natural History at Harvard; second image is a well know site, Acord Street In Boston, MA; the last one is an interior at the Tower building at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
These were done with a Lamy Safari EF, the paper feels like Fabriano with texture, not sure what paper is as I was given this little sketchbook as a gift and it was hand made by my friend Di Metcalf who runs an art store in Cape Town SA
Boston Sketcher 