Me urban sketching a street scene
Sketch Crawl in Cabanas
Another outing with our local Algarve Plein Air Collective in Cabanas. A nice relaxing way to start a Sunday: standing under the shade of a big tree, sketching buildings and foliage on the other side of the street. Chatting to neighbours as they wander by.
I really liked the simplicity of this scene with the buildings and foliage, but it’s actually deceptively simple, because of all that green! So for once I decided to take a methodical approach to sketching and painting:
- Loose pencil shapes for composition
- Loose ink lines for outlines and some of the detail
- 1st layer of watery colour
- 2nd layer of more saturated colour
- Faffing about with more colour!
- Add tonal shading and ink lines for definition and depth
Usually I’d just dive right in with ink, and slap a bit of colour on. Getting lost in the detail before I’d even considered the big shapes creating a pleasing layout, but because the scene was so large I erred on the side of caution, and took a more laboured approach. And I’m please that I did.
1. Loose pencil shapes for composition
I started mapping out the big shapes across a double page spread of an A5 sketchbook. Much bigger than I’d usually sketch. And about half way through I realised that I didn’t really have a definitive shape to my street scene, so I moved a few bits of building around and created some more foliage in order to make a V-Shape composition, with the bright bougainvillea bush just off centre.
2. Loose ink lines for outlines and some of the detail
I corrected and moved some of my pencil lines during this inking layer, and I held myself back from putting too much ink detail in at this stage. Instead, I wanted to apply the watercolour, and then finish off with some defining ink lines to add definition and depth.
Although we were these to paint flora and fauna and buildings, I love the little bonus items: Satellite Dish, TV Ariels, Lamppost, and Washing Line.
3. First layer of watery colour
With all of these greens in play, I knew I needed to limit my colour palette so that the final sketch had a feeling of colour harmony. So I decided to use a colour triad of the following three colours:
- Manganese Blue Hue
- Hansa Yellow Medium
- Quin Rose
I experimented with making a few greens, and had to use all three colours to dull the greens down. I was able to make a believable colour for the roof tiles, and of course the Quin Rose was perfect for the Bougainvillea. My only challenge with this trio was that I found it impossible to mix a cool grey out of these colours, and settled for a coolish brown colour instead.
I quite often dive straight into my scene, and leave the sky until last, and then become fearful that my sky will ruin the scene. So this time around I added a simple sky first to get it out of the way.
This stage is officially the UGLY stage. It’s at this point you usually want to abandon the sketch, and start again. But I kept going, even though there were so many elements of this sketch I didn’t like.
4. Second layer of more saturated colour
I kept with the same trio of colours, even though it would have been easier to delve into the other blues and yellows to create some darker, and more olive greens. But I was determined to keep the colour harmony by restricting the colour palette.
Tweaks to my Urban Sketchbook Board Set Up
I’ve added one small tweak to my urban sketch kit. I found a small square mixing surface in one of my palettes, and because it’s metal, it can be mounted on top of the magnetic clip that’s holding my palette onto my sketch board. I still feel like I need a larger mixing area. So this tweak is a work in progress until I find something that is more functional.
5. Faffing about with more colour
This is when you get to play. It’s a rewarding stage where I flit around a sketch. A dab here, and dab there. Looking at the scene, and assessing the sketch to determine what’s missing, and where we need more depth. This was a little challenging, because I’d enhanced the scene with my own interpretation of where buildings and plants were, so I had to improvise in places.
6. Add tonal shading and ink lines for definition and depth
My initial layer of ink lines were pretty minimal, and mostly structural, so there was a lot of depth missing from the painted sketch, and it really needed the careful addition of more ink lines to depict some edges and areas of shadow.
I used a pale grey Tombow pen to add some of the cast shadows, and added some pale textural washes to the walls, to tone down some of the stark white. But in hindsight, I wish I’d left the main building next to the bougainvillea as a pure white building to emphasise the focal point.
This sketch took about 90 minutes, with a few breaks included to let the paint dry between layers etc. We both enjoyed creating this sketch, and would happily sketch it again.
If you’re in the East Algarve, why not pay a visit to the Algarve Plein Air Collective Facebook group to see when the next sketch event is scheduled, and join us for some creative sketching outside.
