A summary of the art materials I packed for urban sketching during my 9 day trip to Paris, Ghent, and Lille. Includes a review of what I used, and which materials just got a free holiday without having to work for it!

Another look at Andrew Tan’s (dreamscape) concepts and approaches for his comic strip style page layouts. This time around we’re looking at his use of limited colour and negative space.

Day 97 of sketching people at Faro Airport while waiting for a delayed flight to Paris. Experimenting with ink lines with spot colour, and adding blocks of colour behind the people sketches.

Thanks to some inspiration from urban sketcher Roger Klaassen, I’ve been evaluating his people sketches where he’s included blocks of colour behind his figures, and then experimenting with this technique of adding blocks of colour to my urban sketches to see how they can be improved by the background method.

A quick people sketch at the cafe, and swatching a muted shade of green, that morphed into a beautiful skin tone shade using natural sienna, cobalt turquoise light, and opera pink. I also ruminate on how I sketch people and how they see themselves, and how those are two very different things when I sketch my version of reality.

To add interest to my people sketches, I’ve been experimenting with loose watercolour washes for variegated backgrounds with a semi-abstract feel to them. To create skies with energy, movement and depth – with the occasional cauliflower, bloom or back-run.

Day 95 of sketching people. Today I sketched groups at the monthly Sol de Inverno event in Tavira. I used a different easel today, made out of an A5 watercolour book cover, and it worked really well.

I revisit a loose watercolour sardine sketch I painted before I arrive din Portugal in 2022, and have another attempt at an empty can, this time with loose lines and loose watercolour and plenty of splatter.

Day 94 of sketching people at a live sketching event at a local art gallery. I faced the dilemma of wanting to add colour to my sketches but having to wait for the page to dry before I could begin another sketch.

A step by step approach to adding tonal shading, adjusting saturation, and emphasising lines to add depth to a Toulouse street scene sketch, and create a strong focal point.

Day 93 of urban sketching people at Tavira Plaza. Ink and Tonal Shading sketches on location, and discovered that if I leave the Tombow water soluable ink to “cure”, you can add watercolour on top of it and it doesn’t bleed or spread.

I added a new book binding stitch to my reportoire. This book was made with recycled materials, and I used a variation of the traditional buttonhole binding stitch to hold my signatures in place.

Easter Sunday wandering around Tavira looking for inspiration to sketch people and buildings. But I only managed a few sketches, one of them was the honey man at the craft fair by the river.

Wandered around Cabanas today looking for something to sketch, and found this lonely fishing boat by the fishing huts just screaming out to be sketched.

Inspiration from Andrew James and Amy Stewart about using a road trip to document a travel journey with small and simple thumbnail sketches. I experimented with the idea of sketching from a train using a slowed-down video on YouTube.

Day 91 of urban sketching people at the cafe. Sketched onto a watercolour paper background of coffee stains. I also prepped some page for my next cafe sketching trip, experimenting with different ways to apply the coffee and vary the patterns created.

Sketch of a building and street scene in Santa Luzia next to Tavira. Used loose Ink lines and watercolour application to create a dynamic sketch. And evaluated what aspects of the sketch worked, and what improvements I could make to future building sketches.

Day Ninety of sketching people in ink and watercolour. Today I sketched at the cafe, using pages with coffee stains on them. One spread used coffee stain rings, and the other page was messier coffee stain splashes. Both effects are really conducive to sketching loose ink lines and and expressive approach to adding watercolour.

Day 89 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. A day sketching a group of Beach Bums, and experimenting with the type of expressive effects I’m able to create by adding salt to damp watercolour.

Day 88 of sketching people. Urban Sketching people in Tavira at the park, in the bank, and at the cafe. Sketching quickly to capture the moment before the people move away.

Here’s my current urban sketching set up when drawing and painting on location. It includes a DIY sketchbook board I made out of recycled watercolour pads. It works really well for A4, A5, and A6 size sketchbooks. Find out how to make it, and what else I attach to my board when I’m urban sketching.

Urban Sketching day out in Tavira sketching Tavira Public Gardens. Take a deep dive into how I planned the composition using the L-shaped layout, and how to create dynamic skies. I also sketched one of the town’s many churches and tested how to use water-soluble ink to create shadow area.

Day 87 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. A quick loose sketch of one of the local boules players, and then a loose application of watercolours.

Day 86 of sketching people. The calm of sketching people at the cafe when you know they’re not going to move much vs. the urgency of sketching people on a bench when you fear they may get up to walk at any minute means you create different line styles. Tight vs. loose.