Urban Sketch of Statue and Tavira Public Gardens

Spring Has Arrived

Such a pretty a day to venture further afield from Cabanas, so headed off to Tavira to wander the streets and find some scenes to sketch. My first stop was the Tavira Public Gardens, and then I headed to the garden behind the Church of São Francisco.

Tavira Public Gardens Urban Sketch

I usually to the public gardens first because there’s always people sitting on benches and wandering slowly around, and I always manage to find people to sketch. But this is the first time I’ve come out urban sketching with my A4 landscape sketchbook, which was screaming out for a larger scene to sketch.

Even though it was warm and sunny, we’re still early enough in the season that it’s still a little chilly in the shade, so I found a bench in full sun.

It was a busy scene in front of me, and a little overwhelming. So I channeled the sketchbook layout concepts I’d learned recently in my Bonnie XX tutorials, about creating an L-shaped composition, and leaving some of the elements that don’t fit, out of the scene.

Click here to read about how I made my DIY sketchbook board / travel easel and my urban sketching set up for today.

Planning the Urban Sketch Layout

The sketch reads from right to left. The palm tree is the most dominant element in the scene, and I added some green splashes to create a bit of movement on this focal point.

Then your eye is drawn to the building behind it. I coloured all the other objects in this sketch with a mix of monochromatic shades, but left this focal-point house white, so that it draws the eye, and added blue shutters.

The row of flowers in the beds in front of the houses create an organic path for the eye to travel and land on the statue in the foreground. This statue isn’t immediately obvious because it’s the same height at the buildings because of the position I was sketching from and the perspective. This statue is where I used some of the darkest areas of grey so that it doesn’t visually merge into the background buildings.

I made a mistake with the perspective of sketching the van that’s in front of the buildings. It was partly obscured by the tree I omitted, and I really thought I’d ruined the sketch and almost gave up on it at that point. Then I made a conscious decision to just keep going and ignore it.

When it came to adding the flowers, I realised I could disguise the van issues with them, so I’m glad I persevered with the sketch.

I painted the van a watery mix of Cobalt Turquoise Light, so that it was visible and differentiated from the buildings, but not so bright that it became a focal point. I think as it is, it blends into the scene without being distracting.

Creating a dynamic Urban Sketched Sky

I used two different blues for the sky, and dapped off areas with some paper towel, which has created a lovely variety of textures and depths.

I pre-wet the page and created two watery puddles of blue (French Ultra Marine and Manganese Blue Hue) in my palette. Then I alternated picking the blues up and let them merge on the page. I really like that the sky seems to have fragments of a lilac in it.

I’m realising that the best approach for a dynamic sky is – don’t fiddle with it too much. Just slap on the paint, use plenty of water, and cross your fingers and hope for the best.

I used some of the same blues to create the greens for my palm tree, so that there was colour harmony between the focal point, and the largest area of colour.

Urban Sketch of the Igreja de São Francisco

I’ve sketched this church before, but thought I’d sketch it from a different perspective today. I just focused on the top part of the church. This was really an exercise to practice using a waterproof ink to draw with, and then where I wanted to add shadow, I used a water soluble ink and then activated it with water to get it to bleed. In today’s two sketches I used a Tombow dual water-based brush pen (N35). I like using a Tombow vs. a fine liner, because you don’t end up with an ink line, you get a softer effect of just get the ink bleed.

I’ve been testing my different water soluble fine liners (I have quite a collection), and they all give a different intensity of bleed. But next time I go sketching I’m going to use a Pental Brush Pen.

This is a new addition to my pen fold, and takes an ink cartridge. If you add water straight away, all of the ink bleeds, but if you leave it a couple of seconds some of the ink becomes waterproof and the rest bleeds. With the brush pen you can get some nice line variation, so it seems to be good for adding texture. I’m doing to have to explore this pen more, and see if I prefer it to using a Tombow.