Workshop Session1. Thursday 16 July, 10:30 - 13:30 hrs
My Notes BEFORE I take this Workshop
This is the first workshop I’m attending on the morning of the second day (Thursday July 16th) of the Urban Sketcher’s Symposium in Toulouse. I chose it specifically because of the reportage element of mixing people sketches with text – Dan uses interviews and jots down snippets of his conversations within his sketches.
The programme mentioned that it was aimed of sketcher’s that think they can’t sketch people, so it seems like the first part of the workshop focuses on actually drawing people, and then it’ll wrap up with practicing the interview approach for collecting input from our sketch victims.
I’m a little nervous about the interview/interactive part of this workshop. My usual sketching style is observation of a scene, from a distance, that I add some social commentary to a sketch in the form of a short poem.
I’d much rather observe from afar, and eavesdrop conversations, rather actively engage in a conversation with my sketch subject. So this approach is going to be a social stretch – and it’s going to get me out of my comfort zone for sure.
About the Workshop Instructor
Workshop Description
Supply List
My Notes AFTER I take this Workshop
Well I was right that the first part of the workshop focused on proportions for sketching the face and body. Dan went over a lot of stuff that I’d already encountered, but it’s always good to get reminders about basic figure drawing tips so that it can become automatic and intuitive. After this demo part of the workshop we were set a couple of warm up exercises.
First Warm Up Exercise
The first warm up exercise was to split up into pairs and do at quick sketch of our partners, and I partnered up with Haley, an American who is living in the South of France. Here’s our sketches of each other.
Dan had a box of Etchr fine liner pens of different widths, and before each exercise we had to blind-pull a pen out of the box, and use it to sketch our warm up exercises. I pulled a thin pen for the first warm-up, and Haley pulled the brush pen. I’m not a big fan of brush pens, so I’m glad I didn’t get that one! But the concept behind using different pens was that it’s not the materials that are important, and you shouldn’t use them as an excuse.
Second Warm Up Exercise
For the second warm up exercise we had to wander around the area and sketch a standing person, a sitting person, and a group. For this exercise I pulled the 0.8 pen. Not my usual choice, although I do a few of these fatter nibbed pens, but I was just glad I hadn’t pulled the brush pen!
I was actually really surprised how much I liked the look of this darker line. It somehow feels more intentional and dramatic, and has more of an illustrative look and less sketchy. I was suddenly wondering if I should be using fatter nibs to sketch with, rather than my usual fine nibs. And each time I look at this sketch, I question my historical choice of sketch line.
Urban Sketching at the Victor Hugo Market
We were allowed to use whatever pen we liked for our market sketches, and instead of choosing a 0.05, I fattened-up, and chose a 0.3. Our assignment was to sketch in the market and add some overheard conversations into our sketches.
Dan’s usual style of sketching relies heavily on reportage, and interviewing the people and adding the text to his sketches. This was reportage-light, and we only had to ear-wig some conversation to add in, which I was really pleased about. I’d much rather do that than interview, sketch, and document all in one go.
In the demo section of the workshop Dan had given us some helpful tips for making our sketches more interesting and dynamic:
- Thinking in layers of foreground, middle ground and background
- Use different body postures when sketching groups reduce figure monotony
- Use contrast and overlapping to establish depth
- Avoid straight lines
He actually had a lot more tips, but these four are the one’s that resonated the most. I used overlapping elements and colour to establish depth in my sketches, which is something I have been thinking about more consciously recently.
The one tip I really took to heart was avoid straight lines. Usually when I sketch market stall counters I use horizontal lines, but I intentionally used angled lines in my sketches, and this immediately added more interest, and made the sketches look less static. I made a mental note to start trying to use this approach a lot more so that it becomes an intuitive part of my sketching style.
In this first sketch I didn’t established the foreground, mid ground and background enough, because it doesn’t feel strongly delineated. The background (glasses) have the same tonal range as the mid ground (bottles), and there’s no strong difference between the foreground person and the mid ground. I could have used tonal values and no lines for these glasses, and this would have helped. But I’m happy with the diagonal angle of the market stall, and this really helps to add interest to an otherwise pretty uneventful scene.
I did two market sketches, and used a limited palette for both – Manganese Blue Hue and Indian Red, which are two of the colours from a triad I wanted to experiment with for some of my Toulouse sketches. I used grey Tombow pens for the rest of my sketches.
In this second sketch for the butcher’s stall, I used the warmer tone for the foreground, and the cooler blue for the mid ground, and just tonal grey for the background elements. So this has a more clearly identifiable foreground, mid ground, and background.
Throw Downs and Workshop Photos
At the end of the of our warm up exercises, and after our market session we had sketch throw downs. I took a few photos, but wish I’d taken more.
I really enjoyed this workshop, although my sketch output wasn’t as successful as I’d anticipated. I think because there was a time limit on the sketching, and it felt a little rushed. But I’ve taken away some invaluable tips from this workshop, which need to be incorporated into my sketching style to make it more dynamic and interesting.
