ROVING JAY

Day 93 of urban sketching people at Tavira Plaza. Ink and Tonal Shading sketches on location, and discovered that if I leave the Tombow water soluable ink to “cure”, you can add watercolour on top of it and it doesn’t bleed or spread.

I added a new book binding stitch to my reportoire. This book was made with recycled materials, and I used a variation of the traditional buttonhole binding stitch to hold my signatures in place.

Easter Sunday wandering around Tavira looking for inspiration to sketch people and buildings. But I only managed a few sketches, one of them was the honey man at the craft fair by the river.

Wandered around Cabanas today looking for something to sketch, and found this lonely fishing boat by the fishing huts just screaming out to be sketched.

Inspiration from Andrew James and Amy Stewart about using a road trip to document a travel journey with small and simple thumbnail sketches. I experimented with the idea of sketching from a train using a slowed-down video on YouTube.

Day 91 of urban sketching people at the cafe. Sketched onto a watercolour paper background of coffee stains. I also prepped some page for my next cafe sketching trip, experimenting with different ways to apply the coffee and vary the patterns created.

Sketch of a building and street scene in Santa Luzia next to Tavira. Used loose Ink lines and watercolour application to create a dynamic sketch. And evaluated what aspects of the sketch worked, and what improvements I could make to future building sketches.

Day Ninety of sketching people in ink and watercolour. Today I sketched at the cafe, using pages with coffee stains on them. One spread used coffee stain rings, and the other page was messier coffee stain splashes. Both effects are really conducive to sketching loose ink lines and and expressive approach to adding watercolour.

Day 89 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. A day sketching a group of Beach Bums, and experimenting with the type of expressive effects I’m able to create by adding salt to damp watercolour.

Day 88 of sketching people. Urban Sketching people in Tavira at the park, in the bank, and at the cafe. Sketching quickly to capture the moment before the people move away.

Here’s my current urban sketching set up when drawing and painting on location. It includes a DIY sketchbook board I made out of recycled watercolour pads. It works really well for A4, A5, and A6 size sketchbooks. Find out how to make it, and what else I attach to my board when I’m urban sketching.

Urban Sketching day out in Tavira sketching Tavira Public Gardens. Take a deep dive into how I planned the composition using the L-shaped layout, and how to create dynamic skies. I also sketched one of the town’s many churches and tested how to use water-soluble ink to create shadow area.

Day 87 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. A quick loose sketch of one of the local boules players, and then a loose application of watercolours.

Day 86 of sketching people. The calm of sketching people at the cafe when you know they’re not going to move much vs. the urgency of sketching people on a bench when you fear they may get up to walk at any minute means you create different line styles. Tight vs. loose.

Urban Sketch of a local washing line I walked back from Conceição to Cabanas on my way back from an…

Day 85 of sketching people. I did a couple of different versions of a sketch based on a photo of a women I took in London. The first version was uninspiring and not the least bit memorable, but my second version used a loose line and dynamic painting style inspired by Australian artist Toni Burt.

Day 82, 83, and 84 of sketching people at the cafe, garage, and on the boardwalk. Not a huge output, but took the opportunity of sketching in the cracks of life. Making the most of time I spent waiting around. Better than doom-scrolling.

As part of the Liz Steel watercolour course I created a colour preference mood board to make sure the colours I was attracted to, were in my palette, or could be mixed from the colours in my palette.

In this article I look at a collection of people sketches by Tiago Crus and analyse how he uses a hierarchy of line, colour, and contrast. How he establishes a focal point, and how he creates a strong visual pathway to lead the viewer’s eye.

Using a sketchbook page full of overlapping people from a cafe during a recent urban sketching outing, I’ve analysed the different ways to improve the composition and layout of the sketch using thumbnail sketches. Experimenting with different layouts by adjusting focal point, increasing negative space, and creating a dynamic shape on the page, and making sure to leave space for a title.

Day 81 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. A detailed sketch of my MIL relaxing on the couch.

I delve into Andrew Tan’s (dreamscape) concepts and approaches for his comic strip style page layouts. He’s an urban sketcher and comic book artist based in Singapore. I also summarise his Skillshare class which covers how to sketch quicker and more simply using contour lines.

Day 79 and 80 of sketching people. Urban Sketching people during my train journeys around the UK. I sketched at Kings Cross, Doncaster, and Hull, on the train, and at the cafe. Experimented with some limited palette compositions.

Santi Sallés’ YouTube channel has examples of him sketching using a comic strip style layout, and a more organic page layout. But use the inclusion of small vignettes to capture his urban sketched scenes.