Sometimes you don’t go looking for your watercolour style choices, they’re just happy accidents.

Discover how I’m approach June’s Tonal challenge with my current urban sketching watercolour kit.

Find out what I learned from Andrey Shmatnik’s Urban Sketching Tutorial on Etchr, and how he sketches different versions of people in the foreground, mid-ground, and background. Including how he stylises his carrot people for more character.

Find out how I overcame by creative block by using Blind Contour sketches to get inspired and motivated to sketch again.

A review of the Hahnemühle Watercolour Book, which is ideal for urban sketching.

The first 32 people sketches for this year’s One Week 100 People.

Read about art classes, events, and other Algarve resources.

Need motivation to sketch people? Join the 2023 One Week 100 People sketching challenge in March.

The Direção Regional de Cultura do Algarve printed a set of our urban sketched postcards of Tavira market, as part of the Mediterranean Diet festival this year. One of my sketches was included.

Here’s how I experimented to reduce the greens in my travel palette from 3 to 1.

Get inspired by the World of Urban Sketching – a new book by Stephanie Bower. Full of sketcher’s insights and great drawings.

How adjusting your sketch speed or where you hold your pen helps you find your sketching style. My assessment of the Find Your Line tutorial by Jen Dixon, and what I discovered by adjusting my pen grip and speed to help me determine what lines feel right, and which ones feel forced or contrived. And How to develop a line style that feels natural.

If you can’t get out and sketch, Sketching People from Travel Photos is a great alternative. Especially when you review your sketches to learn from them. Here’s a selection of sketches from our Cambodian Trip.

This gesture drawing tutorial had some good tips for developing urban sketching people skills

If you only have 15 minutes, try this YT tutorial from Toby Urban Sketch for 4 quick tips.

It doesn’t matter what subject or object you draw. It’s all good practice. Here’s a random selection of mine.

Here’s a couple of urban sketchers I discovered this month with simple sketching styles

The beginning of my 365 Day of Urban Sketching People. Follow along on my journey to master capturing people live.

My sketch of a local wine bar featured in East Algarve Magazine.

My Algarve Urban sketches on show at a Tavira Market exhibition

Even for a quick little getaway, I still pack a sketch book and set of pens. Here’s what I took to Coimbra.

Here’s some tips for practicing sketching small and tiny figures to include in your urban sketches to add a sense of scale and context to the scene. Limiting your canvas size helps you to practice reducing the level of detail necessary. I created a list of tips that can be incorporated into your practice sessions, and share some of the challenges I encountered to help you resolve some of the hurdles you may face when sketching these tiny figures.

I painted the same scene in two styles—Wobbly urban sketch and precise studio sketch.

First train trip to explore Faro and photograph buildings and scenes that inspire me to sketch.