Urban Sketcher and Reportage Artist Veronica Lawlor

Day Forty of Sketching People

Continuing with day 40 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Today the Urban Sketcher’s Organisation released the event, workshop, lecture, and demonstration programme schedule for the 19th International Urban Sketcher’s Symposium in Toulouse. I watched the promo videos of some of the different instructors hosting sessions in Toulouse, and sketched some quick sketches from the freeze-frames. I also attended the Pencil4Tea speed sketching event, and took a turn at posing for one of the songs.

Sketching from Videos

I’ve been compiling a blog post recently about my process of doing quick portraits of urban sketching instructors. It’s part of my creative process to do a quick portrait sketch before I start their course or class. It’s my way of setting an intention or establishing a virtual connection with the instructor.

Instructors hosting workshops in Toulouse

While I was watching the promotional videos of the instructor’s hosting a workshop at the Toulouse Symposium, I automatically grabbed my sketchbook to sketch the instructors.

I’m starting with the instructors that piqued my interest the most, but I think I’d like to work my way through all the videos and sketch them all. Apparently there’s a high demand for workshop attendance, so I’m not sure if I’ll be successful in signing up for the workshops I’m most interested in. But maybe this is my way of setting an intention.

Veronica Lawlor: Sketching Joie De Vivre in the Pink City

I’m interested in this workshop because Veronica does a lot of reportage, and that’s an area of urban sketching that’s really intriguing to me. I’ve been experimenting with adding more text to my urban sketches, and I want to work towards creating a style of reportage that feels natural and effective.

I’m new to reportage, and have been concerned that because reportage sketching is a form of visual journalism, intended to create a visual narrative of events (like civil unrest, or war zones etc.), that my type of day-to-day sketching and text isn’t technically reportage. But in Veronica’s video she say’s it’s the small moments of daily life that help to convey the true character of a place.

So this short video helped to boost my resolve that I’m on the right track. And that the day-to-day moments I observe and capture in my sketchbook, are very much reportage.

Dan Archer: Mind Your (Body) Language

Dan Archer is a cartoonist and visual storyteller, and likes sketching people. Although his workshop is aimed at sketchers who “can’t draw people”, I think they’ll be a lot to learn about capturing people in motion, so this is my most coveted people sketching workshop at the Symposium.

At the last USk symposium in Poznan, Dan’s workshop focused on the world of illustrated reportage using quick ink sketches and vivid watercolour washes. Which would have been right up my street!

He sketches directly in ink and uses facial expression, posture, and live dialogue to bring a narrative pulse to his urban sketches. His approach is less about perfectionism and more about capturing a feeling and relies heavily on what’s being said in the scene. His approach to urban sketching is that the sounds of a scene are just as important as the visuals, and this is how he approaches reportage sketching.

In a Etchr Live Demo last year he demonstrated how to simplify and pick out key elements of a scene to depict, in order to capture its essence with his signature comic book feel.

A lot of his posts on Instagram include snippets of conversations overheard during the sketching process.

Richard Briggs: Unfolding Visons – A Simple Approach to Drawing Narrow Streets

Richard Briggs is an artist and arc. His Toulouse workshop consists of creating a series of continuous line based sketches of narrow streets.

Initially I was just going to look at workshops that focused on people and reportage – my particular interest. But I liked how he presented his promo reel (and his flared jeans). That’s enough of a reason to want to join his workshop, isn’t it?

I like that Richard is planning on just using ink lines in his workshop. I’m a fan of using continuous line when I sketch, and I thought it would be interesting to get out of my comfort zone of sketching people, and sketch some street scenes.

But I do like how he uses watercolour in his sketches, and he’s also adept at sketching people. He’s sketched a lot of towns and cities in the UK, and I especially like his Life’s a Beach series of sketches. This style of capturing life’s little moments, is really appealing to me.