MOH playing golf today

Day One Hundred and Thirty-Eight of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 138 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Sketching from a photo I took at the driving range.

Sketching Outside on the Driving Range

I envy sketchers who can successfully capture gestures with a quick swish of a pen or brush. But that really loose style of sketching doesn’t fit well with my personal preferences. I love seeing other sketchers do it, but when I do it, it just looks a mess. So today on the driving range, I took a photo of MOH, and then used the photo to sketch him, and then sketched the surrounding landscape. So this was half urban sketch, half sketch from photo.

I only got a chance to do this one sketch, because for the round of golf I was caddy, manning the pin, and carrying the putter up to the green. I was also in charge of the scorecard. So many responsibilities, there was no extra time to sketch!

I hadn’t taken my paints to the golf course, but I did have a set of light, medium, and dark water soluble Tombow pens with me, which I used to add shadows to the figure. When I got home, I added colour to the rest of the sketch, and was planning on leaving the figure as a tonal sketch, but ended up adding blue to the trousers, which created a nice looking dark tone to complement the area in bright sunlight.

Colour Palette

Earlier in the day I’d been playing around with a newly compiled colour triad of Burnt Sienna Light, Quin Gold, and Manganese Blue Hue, which is a hot favourite for using in Toulouse at the Urban Sketcher’s Symposium.

Greens and Browns

I like the muted greens and browns this colour triad creates, and it’s going to be a lot of fun exploring the colour combinations these three colours can create.

I’m usually a little wary of using greens, because if you don’t get them right, they can become too garish and attract too much attention. But the muted greens in this driving range sketch work really well.

The driving range area is a loose mix of muted green and an earth-tone yellow, and the granulation from the Manganese Blue Hue and Quin Gold create some noticeable texture, without being too overwhelming. I added some Burnt Sienna Light to the left-over green mix, and this created a brown which harmonises within the scene.

I want to get a bit of mixing practice in before Toulouse, so I can get more familiar with mixing and using these colours together in a sketch, but so far so good. I’m surprised that I’m a fan of this muted colours generated by this colour wheel, because usually I err on the side of bright bright bright. But maybe this is just another step in the ever-evolving journey of my sketching style.