“Observe Carefully; Interpret Freely”

 

7/17/23 Edmonds waterfront
(final exercise in Virginia Hein's workshop completed at home)

After more than seven months of eager anticipation (and much hard work from many volunteers), SketcherFest finally came to fruition on the Edmonds waterfront last weekend! The brainchild of Gabi Campanario, SketcherFest included urban sketching workshops, sketchwalks, vendor market, book fair and art exhibit. It looked a lot like a mini USk symposium! (And with more than 400 people registered for the free sketchwalks, it wasn’t even very “mini”!) Modeled after the carnet de voyage events popular in Europe, it’s the first of its kind in the US. As if all of that weren’t enough, it occurred on one of the most beautiful weekends of the year.

Last year when Virginia Hein was in town, I missed out on her workshop, so I was especially happy to grab a ticket for her SketcherFest workshop, “Up Close and Far Away” (it filled within minutes when registration opened several months ago).

With a focus on depth and distance, we did three exercises to practice seeing depth in a composition; separating the foreground, middle ground and background; and finally using color and atmospheric perspective to reinforce depth. Each exercise was preceded by a demo, and during the final throwdown, Virginia critiqued each sketch with helpful suggestions. She gave us a beautiful handout with numerous color illustrations from her own work.

In the first exercise (graphite), we made several studies with a focus on showing distance and depth in the composition. Next (magenta lines), we separated the foreground, middle ground and background.

Virginia has this philosophy about urban sketching: “Observe carefully, but interpret freely.” Words of wisdom to live by!

7/15/23 This is as far as I got during the workshop.
Although I used only 3 colors, I thought the shrub 
looked too saturated and stood out too much, so I tried
to make it duller in the final. The figures also came out with strange
colors that didn't look cohesive, so I added some watercolor pencil,
but then I lost the light.

I didn’t finish my final sketch on location, and I also forgot to take a reference photo of the scene, but I got enough painted that I could finish it later at home from memory (at right). Virginia knew that I had only recently started using watercolor after years of colored pencil, so she encouraged me to try a mixed-media approach to finish the sketch if I wanted to. Initially, I was planning to finish it with paint, but finishing with pencils seemed like the right direction.

I think I made it worse instead of better because I lost the light on the two figures (top of post), but I’m showing it here anyway because it has the official SketcherFest Edmonds stamp!

In tomorrow’s post I’ll show more highlights from SketcherFest weekend.

Excellent demos and explanations from Virginia.

Workshop participants even got a goodie bag! Did I mention that SketcherFest was like a mini symposium?