Day 1-5 of The 100 Day Project

Lavante Cabanas 15 minute ink and watercolour sketch

The first five days of #the100dayproject have flown by. As mentioned in my participation announcement about the 100 day project, I’ve chosen to concentrate on 15-minute quick sketch and watercolour studies of buildings. The goal is to hone my quick urban sketching skills so that I can incorporate buildings into my people sketches without too much effort.

My goal is to discover:

the key elements of buildings I need to capture and what can be left to the imagination.
how to get comfortable with creating wonky buildings.
how to veer away from realism and towards impressionism.
how to finesse the loose and ragged skies I’ve been favouring.
what aspects of buildings I like sketching, and what I’d prefer to avoid.
how to incorporate the urban sketching techniques I’ve learned.
my ideal palette of colours for sketching buildings.

So here goes with my first five days of ink sketches and watercolours.

1/100 – 15 Minute sketch of Lavante Bar in Cabanas

15 minute Watercolour sketch of Lavante bar in Cabanas

What I like:

Minimal colour palette of FUM blue and browns, with the spot colour of red.
Incorporation of road signs to add a complimentary focal point.
Raggedy sky and foreground.

What I didn’t like:

Nothing glaringly obvious! (A good start to the challenge)

What I learned:

15 minutes isn’t long, but it’s long enough to get a quick sketch and watercolour completed.

2/100 – 15 Minute sketch of a neighbours house in Cabanas

15 minute Watercolour sketch of a yellow house in Cabanas

What I like:

The shutters.
The erratic nature of the cobblestone road. It’s messy and there’s no rhythm to it.

What I didn’t like:

The slope of that top yellow area of the building. It should have gone from wide to narrow to tie into the building’s perspective. It’s glaringly incorrect, but it doesn’t bother me that much.

What I learned:

Sketch what I see, not what I think I see.

3/100 – 15 Minutes sketch of a green tiled building in Cabanas

15 minute Watercolour sketch of a green tiled house in Cabanas

Disclaimer – this is actually the second attempt at this house. I didn’t like how I depicted the tiles in my first attempt, so I wanted another stab at creating the impression of tiles, rather than a realistic interpretation.

What I like:

My second attempt at creating the impression of tiles. These sketches are so small, there’s now way to include the tile detail, so I settled on conveying the colours instead.
The mixture of blues I used in the sky (Cerulean and FUM)

What I didn’t like:

The buildings should be paler and an off-white, rather than that sandy colour.

What I learned:

Create an authentic looking off-white for walls.

4/100 – 15 Minutes sketch of our local butcher’s shop

15 minute Watercolour sketch of a the butcher's shop in Cabanas

What I like:

The vague ideal of a vehicle parked at the back and the bicycle parked at the front.

What I didn’t like:

No clear focal point.
Blue window glass is too distracting.
Too many colours in the foreground (pink in the window, green on the door, Yellow and green sign, blue pavement).

What I learned:

Identify the focal point, and then use colour of tonal values to make sure it stands out.
Use neutral or faded colours if elements aren’t important or a focal point.

5/100 – 15 Minutes sketch of Conceicão Train Station

15 minute Watercolour sketch of a the Train Station in Conceicão

What I like:

The yellow warning line that leads you into sketch.
The contrast of the vivid blue sky framing the white building.
Sky technique of Cerulean blue base with FUM dropped into it wet-on-wet. Then some areas dabbed away with kitchen roll to give the impression of clouds and movement.

What I didn’t like:

Blotchy effect of the wall shadows.
Not enough depth of field between the buildings.

What I learned:

Create smoothing looking shadows, so that they’re not a distracting layer of dark and light tones within the shaded area.
If there are multiple buildings in a scene, make one a focal point by using darker pen lines or stronger paint layer.

These five sketches have taken 1 hour and 15 minutes in total, and I’m surprised that during such a short space of time I’ve been able to identify so many opportunities for improvement. Now I just need absorb my notes, and incorporate the learnings into my next 90 sketches. I know so many of these techniques already, it’s just getting them to be second nature.

100day