Cafe Urban Sketch of Man and Pastel de Nata

Day One Hundred and Thirty-Three of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 133 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Urban sketch at a local cafe of a man with a pastel de nata, and a portrait sketch of Koosje Koene using a limited colour palette inspired by Ludivine Alligier‘s tutorial about creating contrast with colour and text.

Urban Sketch at the Café

I had half an hour to kill before an appointment, so what better way to fill this empty slot, than a quick sketch at a cafe nearby. There were only a couple of people in sketching distance, so I sketched this man a couple of times and then because I was running out of time, I quickly sketched the pastel de nata on the plate.

Urban Sketch Poetry

I also added a little bit of poetic reportage to the sketch to support the story.

In the shade of a cafe, where the sun beat down
A man in turquoise, no hint of a frown,
A pastel de nata, his sweet little treat.
While life rushes by, he continues to eat.

Art Materials and Colour Contrast

I used my fude pen, which is fast becoming a favourite. I love the line variety, because it adds an interesting layer of depth to simple sketches. I painted this when I got home, and really like this duo of Cobalt Turquoise Light with the Quin Gold, it’s a vivid combination. I feel they have the same level of intensity and brightness. I’m wondering what colour would made the perfect accent colour for a bit of spot colour in future sketches. I feel some swatching experimentation coming on!

Portrait Sketch from A Video

I was watching Koosje Koene’s Draw Tip Tuesday video and was inspired to freeze frame and sketch her portrait. I used a fine liner and overdid the hatching a little, but I think it’s good to experiment with different pens and sketching techniques.

Colour Contrast

I chose a limited colour palette: Cobalt Turquoise Light and Indian Red, as well as a combination of Quin Gold and CTL to create the green. The browns and greys in the sketch were created from combining these colours in varying quantities. This was inspired by the concepts in the contrasting colour tutorial I was working through today.

Sketch Book Poetry

I’ve been adding poetry to my sketches a lot more frequently, and have been trying to standardise and streamline the style of my handwriting – it’s a work in progress.

One of the chapters in the Creating Contrasts tutorial was about creating contrasting text on a page by using simple thin-line letters, along with bold letters with a stronger level of contrast. So I added Koosje’s name in a heavy font to create some contrast against the poetry text. It was a bit of an afterthought, but when we learn new concepts, we have to start somewhere don’t we?

So here's to the sketchers, 
The quiet and the keen.
Capturing likeness, 
And the gaps in-between.
The truth in each stroke, 
We hope to find.
With ink and our nib, 
We pledge to be kind.

Next is the inspiration behind the experiments to achieve text contrast and colour contrast on my sketch pages.

Lud Mini Zine 01 – Creating Contrasts

I downloaded one of Ludivine Alligier‘s informational zines about creating contrast, it’s the first one she created. It’s one of her mini zines, so not a lot of pages, but it’s packed with useful information about creating contrasts. I must admit, what first attracted me was the mix of turquoise, aqua, and orange in her branding. The combination of this mix of colours is really impactful, so I figured she might know a thing or two about creating contrasts.

This 15-page zine, which costs 6 euros, covers three key areas:

• Creating Text Contrast
• Creating Scale Contrast
• Creating Colour Contrast

The only challenge is that she’s a French travel sketcher, and all of her videos and zines are in French. So on each page in the zine I’m having to cut and paste the text into Google Translate. It’s not always a great translation, and some of the logic gets lost in the translation process. But I actually like that I have to think a bit deeper in order to decipher her concepts – so hopefully that means her concepts will sink into my memory a litter deeper too!

I’m going to work my way through his contrast zine and see which concepts and styles appeal to me, so that I can figure out which ones would complement my existing sketching and watercolour style.