Tag Archives: Urban Sketches

Stand Up Watercolor Sketching

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Tina just wrote this comment to my last post.
I’m starting to think about using watercolors in the field again. But the whole setup part is what stalls me… I like sketching while standing, and having to attach the palette, etc. to my sketchbook or to a board crimps my style. 

The old “clip the palette to your sketchbook road is full of frustration, at least it was for me. Different sketchbook sizes, left page/right page, beginning/end of book… there’s just nothing consistent about this process.

So, long ago I realized that I needed to bring my “table” along with me. Lots of people do this, using fome-core or Coroplast boards. Some clip palettes, some imbed magnets into the backing board. I’ve tried all of these methods and they work, if you’re more consistent in your sketching practice than I am. I went a different way, mounting magnets on the bottom of my palettes…all my palettes. This eliminated the need to use a metal palette. It works as well with Cotman plastic kits as metal palettes. All it takes is a little dab of 5-minute epoxy in each corner and 4 little seed magnets, like this:

Of course this requires that your backing board be made of metal (= heavy). But what if you took some very thin plywood (mine is 3mm) and used contact cement to attach thin metal? “Come on, maybe YOU can do that Larry but I don’t have any tools.”

I found, at the dollar store, a small magnet board…a REALLY cheap magnet board. It cost me $2. It was cheap because it came with a cheap plastic frame around a thin, painted piece of metal that was backed by a piece of cardboard. Oh..and they give you some crappy magnets too.

What a deal this was because it was a game changer for me. It took about 20s to pull the frame off, toss the cardboard in the trash and I was left with a perfect sheet of metal that weighed almost nothing. Some 3M77 contact cement and my board was finished. I just dumped a bunch of art books on it to keep it flat while it dried. That was at least five years ago and she’s still going strong, albeit with scratches here and there.

Because Tina is a sketchbook user and because I know she’s like me and uses different kinds of sketchbooks, I’ll skip my single-sheet approach and just show a couple sketchbook possiblities.

Notice first that I’m holding this in one hand. In fact, when I use this standing up, I also stuff a small water bottle in my right hand (I’m a lefty). Sometimes I put the sketchbook on top and the palette on the bottom; it makes no difference. Notice also that I’m holding it up at an angle. The palette doesn’t move.
Here the palette is at the bottom and I have an A6 sketchbook on top. Works the same. A caveat here. When I’m working I typically hold the board from the top and stick the bottom of the board in my belly. In this configuration I have to be careful to keep wet pans of paint from getting on my clothes.
Yesterday I showed my current small bag set up. Because I use a sandwich of Coroplast to hold my paper I find I can just shove the secondary palette cup between the Coroplast sheets and clip it. It’s extremely stable and I can walk along a trail with this set up and ready to go, though I generally dump any water before I break into my marathon trot. Because Tina likes small sketchbooks I grabbed one of my scribblers as the example here. This is a never-before-seen sketch done in the middle of winter. It was probably -20C so apologies for its crude nature.

I know these are lousy photos but this is less of a blog post and more of a conversation with Tina, and anyone else who found it interesting enough to read to this point.

A Ten-Minute Experiment

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I was out for a walk yesterday and sat down to rest. Looking back from whence I came I “saw” a vignette and simultaneously I asked myself, “could I sketch that in 10 minutes.” The answer was yes, it’s simple so I immediately asked, “in color?”

So, I set up to do this small watercolor, and it’s not complete because the answer to my question was a no, but I stopped at 10 minutes anyway. When I got home I reassembled the kit I was using for the drawing so you can see how my Portable Painter Micro Palette works for me.

Hmmm… I just noticed that in setting this up for the photo I forgot to attach the water container to the palette. Imagine one there, please (grin).

A Bit Of Summer Sketching

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We’ve had a real “meh” spring. A bunch of light rain but mostly it’s been cold, even for us. It’s raining right now but a couple days ago Chantal and I went for the first walk of the year where we didn’t have to wear a jacket, and the day was gorgeous. We walked for at least two hours and along the way we stopped to relax and take in the sun.

At one of those stops we sat at a picnic bench that faced a large tree with an apron of suckers growing from it. I thought it pretty and decided to draw it using a simple Uniball pen. I spent about 10 minutes drawing and then another five adding some color when I got home. Maybe we’ll have a summer afterall.

Are Sketchbooks Important?

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I Made some comments while discussing the loss of my sketch bag and replacement of it. While these were casual comments that weren’t integral to the blog posts, they stirred some responses. I think it’s fair to say that my comments can be put into two piles and summarized thusly:

1) I don’t value my sketchbooks and, in fact, find them something of a nuisance as they accumulate.
2) More and more I’m abandoning sketchbooks in favor of single sheets.

I received several emails about these comments. Some defended the use of sketchbooks and one (there’s always one) wanted to convince me that I shouldn’t “put myself down” by saying my sketchbooks don’t matter. And then Susan King wrote this in the public comments:

“I thought I was the only one who didn’t look at my old sketchbooks. I recently filled two banker’s boxes and put them in the basement because I ran out of shelf space. (I did keep out the ones that have course material in them as I sometimes do go back and look at those.) I was tempted to throw away rather than store the old ones. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this whole subject sometime!”

It was like looking in a mirror. These comments made me think that maybe there was something to say here.

Those of us who joined the urban sketching movement have been taught that one does urban sketching in a sketchbook, and we hear it over and over and over and over again. If you look around, however, you see any number of people at USK events working on single sheets. I’ll talk about that later but today I want to respond to Susan’s curiosity.

When I started sketching I couldn’t draw anything and my attempts were all done on photocopy paper. I remember drawing, or trying to draw, cubes…lots of cubes. Eventually though, after proper indoctrination into USK, I bought a sketchbook, a little A6 book that was small enough to hide as I would go out to draw. And I started filling sketchbooks…lots of sketchbooks. Above is a photo of the only pile still in my office. Like Susan, I’ve got a couple boxes of the darn things in the basement, filled when I needed shelf space. The portfolios in the lower left of that photo are the only things that have moved on those shelves in a decade. They are how I store my single sheet sketches.

Sketchbooks are great if you want to create sketchbooks, those “let me show you the fine art I’ve produced” books that many enjoy. Those wanting to discuss and implement “page layouts” like sketchbooks. Some use sketchbooks as a way of keeping score (look at my shelf of sketchbooks) and all of these reasons are good reasons for sketching in sketchbooks.

But I’ve never been either of those kind of sketchbookers. For me a sketchbook has always been a tool, a place to sketch. I’ve never been shy about saying “I don’t know if I’m an artist. I just draw stuff.” And when I’m done drawing something, I turn the page and don’t look back. I don’t create sketchbooks, I create sketches.

It’s not everyone’s style but even USK tells us that this is “all about the process, not the product.” It certainly is for me. Am I proud that I can now draw something? You bet. A guy who hits a home run is proud too, but he doesn’t spend his nights watching a video of it. He’s too busy trying to hit another one.

So, no big deal here, but Susan and I, and probably some other folks look at a decade’s worth of sketchbooks as something in the way, not something precious. But I’ll finish this by pointing out that both Susan and I haven’t thrown our sketchbooks away. I wish I could say why that is since I never look at them but there you have it. I must see some value in keeping sketches. Sketchbooks aren’t the only way, however.

Just so nobody gets the wrong idea (someone surely will), I’m not dumping on the use of sketchbooks by anyone or for any reason. For me, however, they are getting less and less use. I’ll talk about that next time.

The Family Tree Of Excavators

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This year has been an odd one, with lots more rain than usual and very high temperatures with jacket days interspersed.  Our flowering plants have put on quite a show as a result but at the same time, insects have been scarce.  I’ve seen a single Monarch but no other butterflies.  No mosquitos, one moth, a few flies, but nothing like a typical Quebec summer cadre of insects.  And NO spiders.  I typically get to play with small jumping spiders and we normally end up with a bunch of web-building Theridids around our yard.  Not this year.

But one species that comes and goes like clockwork are the excavators.  These huge yellow and orange beasts trundle around Quebec City like they own the place, digging holes here and there, dragging a stream of orange traffic barrels in their wake.  They show up ever spring. They start to die out when it turns cold.

As a biologist I’m always interested in the life cycles of organisms and excavators are no exception.  The adult shown above is a prime example of the type.  I drew this one several years ago and confess that anyone who believes urban sketching should be done quickly would take offense to the couple hours I spent drawing this one.  There are several things to note beyond their overall size.  First, its feet are huge as are its muddy footprints.  Second, its head is sized to hold a single human and its small relative to its huge, elongated body that swings a long beak here and there.

While walking on my river, I came across a baby excavator.  It was hiding next to an apartment building being built along my river.  You can immediately see that it’s an infant.  Notice how large its head is relative to its body.  Its body is short and pudgy and its feet aren’t as developed as the adult versions.  If you see these little guys operate you’ll notice it bouncing around and rocking back and forth, unlike the adults who move steadily.  I wonder if they simply grow larger with age or maybe there’s a metamorphosis that takes place, maybe during the winter season.  More study is required.

 

Stillman & Birn Alpha (6×8), DeAtramentis Document Black.