Tower Bridge Sketch

After taking Pedro Loureiro’s sketching class this summer, I rooted out a couple of my travel photos from a recent trip to London, and applied the loose sketching concepts and techniques from his class, to sketches I did from my travel photos.

Borough Market Sketch

Borough Market in London is all about food and drink. So it was important to include some of the stall elements, and the garlic hanging in the background. But I wanted the main feature to be the crowd of people in front of the stall, and the mass of workers serving. I created depth between the two groups of figures by using watercolour on the focal point area, and tonal shading on the background figures.

I tried using more white space than usual, but I think this is too much. Some text in the upper right corner would have helped to balance this sketch out more successfully.

Tower Bridge Sketch

The idea of sketching London’s Tower Bridge was really overwhelming. There’s so much detail and on such a large scale. I wouldn’t know where to start. In this sketch, Tower Bridge is the backdrop to people and vehicles, so I only needed small areas of the bridge to give an impression of the location. I used a duo-tone of colours for the people and the bridge to create a synergy between the two, and added a red spot colour on the double decker bus heading our way.

If I was to do this sketch again, I’d have made the bus more prominent. But because I didn’t plan this sketch out beforehand, I didn’t identify the focal point until it was time to add colour to the sketch.

The time to identify the focal point to make sure it’s in the optimal position within the composition, is before you start sketching. That’s where a thumbnail sketch plays such a key role. It can elevate an ok sketch to one with a strong focal point and story.

There’s no bad sketches. Every single one can teach us something valuable, and although I like both of these sketches, if I’d put a bit more thought into them, they would have been a whole lot better.