Toulouse Urban Sketcher’s Symposium Workshop with Richard Briggs – Unfolding Visions

Richard Briggs workshop at the Toulouse Urban Sketcher's Symposium

Workshop Session 2. Friday 17 July, 10:30 - 13:30 hrs

My Notes BEFORE I take this Workshop

This is the second workshop I’m attending on the morning of the third day of the Urban Sketcher’s Symposium in Toulouse. I chose it specifically because I liked Richard’s workshop promo video. Initially I was going to focus on attending workshops about sketching people and reportage, but I was drawn to Richard’s presentation style.

His workshop is about using continuous line to simplify narrow street scenes. I’d much rather sketch people, but I realised it would be good to get out of my comfort zone and focus on sketching buildings in a new way, to see where this new skill could lead me. Exploration and experimentation is a great way to exercise your creative muscles, in directions you didn’t know you needed to explore.

About the Workshop Instructor

Toulouse Urban Sketcher's Symposium Workshop with Richard Briggs - Unfolding Visions

Workshop Description

Supply List

My Notes AFTER I take this Workshop

We walked from the conference centre to a little street that I’d actually discovered the day before when I was looking for vintage shops after the sketch walk. Turns out it’s a popular sketching spot, and has been used for sketch walks and workshops during the Symposium.

We did a couple of warm up exercises. The first was a continuous line portrait of our sketch partner. This time I was partnered with Mario, and my sketch captured him with his eyes down while he was sketching me.

warm up exercise continuous line portrait

warm up exercise continuous line for Richard Briggs workshop at the Toulouse Urban Sketcher's Symposium — warm up exercise continuous line portrait

The second warm up exercise was to wander around the area and capture continuous line sketches of some elements and angels that caught our attention. Richard gave us a postcard piece of paper and I used this to capture four different scenes consisting of elements that you’re really drawn to and you find interesting. We followed this up with some exercises to capture shapes only, and then line. I liked this segment-approach to sketching buildings, where you’re not trying to capture all the detail, just the details that are important to you.

For the final project we had space for four narrow format sketches to encourage us to have a vertical response to our environment, and to play around with scale. I was seriously out of my comfort zone, but I threw myself into the assignment, even though I knew I wouldn’t be switching my sketching allegiance to buildings from people, any time soon.

Richard’s approach in the workshop was to show us different ways we could evaluate and capture the scene around us, using different methods or techniques, to plant the seeds of an idea of how we could use this approach to sketching in the future. I really enjoyed the workshop, even though I struggled with sketching the buildings, but it did reinforce the important of really taking in your surroundings before you start sketching.

It was only later, when one of those seeds Richard planted took root, and I realised how useful this simplified approach to sketching buildings could be for incorporating into my people sketches. When I sketch people I usually have a dilemma about what to sketch in the background to add a sense of place or include a sense of depth to my simple sketches. I’ve been adding poetry so that my people sketches are so one-dimensional. But, this continuous line approach to depict buildings, can quite easily be incorporated behind my sketches of people. I don’t have to sketch the whole background, just enough of it to provide that sense of place and a modicum of interest and depth.