Eiffel Tower Photo 

Inspired by Santi Sallés

Recently I got inspired by some of Santi Sallés’ Instagram posts where he used two different styles of a comic style grid layout to urban sketch his travel adventures.

Today we’re looking at Santi’s YouTube examples of a structured comic strip style layout and a more organic free-form layout. These videos are a great way to get inspired as you watch along with Santi sketching in his sketchbook.

Santi Sallés Grid Layout of Paris

To watch how (left-handed) Sant creates his layout grids, you can see him in action on Youtube. There’s something very therapeutic about watching an artist who inspires you, in action. Santi often use small vignettes because that way he can include more snippets of information about the place.

Rather than spending hours on one sketch of a building, you can create a page full of small vignettes that tell a more inclusive and interesting story about a location.

Sketching Paris Using a Comic Strip Grid Layout

These first two videos are a traditional comic book style grid layout of different small scenes from Paris. All the grid shapes are closed with loose hand-drawn lines.

• Drawing Paris report part 1 and Drawing Paris report part 2

Santi uses a black Bic pen, watercolour, and coloured pencils for these sketches, and even though the grid sizes are small, he packs a lot of details into each tiny sketch.

Sketching Red Farms Using a Dynamic Grid Layout

In the Red Farms YouTube videos Santi uses a more dynamic and organic approach to the grid layout. There’s one main closed grid, one half-closed grid, and the rest of the page is filled up with a mix of colour and black and white vignettes of the related subjects, some with background colour and some without.

Using this organic approach in sketching styles, helps to create priority and depth within the page, so that it’s easier to read.

• Red Farms part 1 and Red Farms part 2

By incorporating a series of sketches in varying degrees of completeness, he’s made it possible for us to navigate this collection of nine sketches, without becoming overwhelmed. It’s very cleverly done, and I’m wondering how I can use a similar approach when sketching people.