Warm, Cool and a Lesson Remembered

 

7/3/23 Northgate

This type of apartment/condo building is all over Northgate – modern, boxy, and generally not of much interest to me to draw. I say that, and yet on this particular morning, I immediately spotted an opportunity to play with warm and cool tones (the building’s actual hues are pale coral and grays, which seems to be a favored palette for contemporary architecture). That’s as good a reason as any to sketch when it’s 69 degrees and sunny.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Barcelona, which was the first of six I have attended. I’m sure it will seem incongruous, but as I sketched this building, I recalled a Gothic church during Inma Serrano’s workshop. She came by to see how I was doing, and I jokingly complained that I had finished the fun part and didn’t want to draw the rest of the building. “Don’t draw it, then!” she said. “Draw only the part that interests you!” As a newbie sketcher, it had not occurred to me that I don’t have to include everything I see. What a liberation! (This post shows the sketch I made then.) This is my thank you to Inma and other symposium instructors whose lessons stay with me a decade later.