360 South (Plus This Old Dog’s New Trick)

4/29/20 4th Ave. NE & NE 85th St., Maple Leaf neighborhood (facing south)

It’s the same traffic circle again, this time facing south. I admit I had been putting off this direction; although I like the arch of trees, there’s nothing else in this view except one dang vehicle after another. I spent way more time than I wanted to on those, then saved the trees for “dessert.”

Technical note: It’s not something you’d notice, but in this sketch I used something that made me whack myself upside the head for not thinking of it sooner. Possibly the single most frequently used pencil in my urban sketching palette is Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle’s Payne’s Grey (508). It’s a cool, dark gray that works beautifully for pavement shadows as well as cloudy Seattle skies. The softness makes it easy to lay down large shadows quickly. I also use it constantly for the initial blocking and outlines of things like cars. For this task, the color is neutral like graphite, but unlike graphite, the line will melt away if I want it to.

The issue I’ve had time and time again, however, is that the soft Museum Aquarelle will lose its point almost immediately (like right after I’ve laid down those large shadows), and if I’ve made the point wet for clouds, it’s too soft to draw with. Details are almost impossible once the point is gone, so I end up sharpening on the street frequently. All these years, I’ve just lived with that, since the benefits of the softness far outweigh the drawbacks.

One day recently when I was digging around among my Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer pencils, which I don’t use much because they rub me the wrong way (they feel “sticky” when I apply them; I have nothing against the pencil’s quality, but it’s just an idiosyncratic “feel” thing), I came across Payne’s Grey (181). Despite my idiosyncrasy, one major benefit of Durer pencils is that they are significantly harder than any of the Caran d’Ache watercolor pencils, so they are ideal for details. They hold a point well for a long time.

 

Top: my favorite Museum Aquarelle; bottom: much harder Albrecht Durer

It suddenly occurred to me: Why don’t I use a Durer Payne’s Grey for blocking, outlines and details, leaving my super-soft Museum Aquarelle for everything else? They are nearly identical in hue, and I’d waste a lot less time sharpening. Even in my very compact pandemic-edition sketch kit, there’s room for one more pencil.

Such an obvious solution, it’s another case for the necessity for both hard and soft pencils.

It’s possible to teach this old dog a new trick after all.

Better Than TV

4/27/20 Maple Leaf squirrel

Insufficiently distracted by Prime’s offerings, we recently succumbed to Netflix. Bingeing on “The Crown” has kept our evenings busy, but the best daytime entertainment is still our bird feeder. In a “normal” year, we would have taken it down by now, knowing that the birds have plenty of better food elsewhere. But this year, with fewer entertainment options, we’ve kept it up. The birds are already dining less often at our feeder, though, and we miss them.

They are, however, not our only visitors. On a recent afternoon, our yard’s resident squirrel gave us quite a show of comedic acrobatics as it tried to eat out of the tiny feeding holes. Swinging wildly from both the wind and its own weight, the squirrel kept falling off, but I have to give it credit for persistence. I wonder if it’s the same one that visited last year. . . we have a Squirrel Buster feeder that would keep it away, but I like this faulty feeder better for its entertainment value.

Though less full of pratfalls, the chickadees, juncos and finches are just as frantic as they compete for the pegs. I’ve sketched the bright yellow male American goldfinches before, but usually from the back where their striking chevron-marked wings are visible. This one stood facing the window long enough that I could capture him from the front this time.

4/23/20 male American goldfinch

And then there’s our daily neighborhood walks. In my recent post about the urban bunnies, I mentioned that they are relatively rare in these parts. Not so with raccoons; we spot them fairly often loping leisurely down the street or ducking under bushes. Once, while waiting at a bus stop, I had a lengthy stare-down with a mama and her adorable kits in tow. I know that they can be a nuisance (or worse), but they have never done me any damage or harm, so I like them. On a recent walk, I heard a sudden scramble as I approached a stand of trees, so I looked up, and two raccoons stared back at me.

If nature’s urban programming were more regular and reliable, we wouldn’t need Netflix at all.

4/28/20 raccoons of Maple Leaf

What Color is Your Kestrel?

Potential kestrel colors

A reader asked the Colored Pencil Geek a very specific color-related question: She was drawing an adult male American kestrel from a photo on the Audubon site, and she realized she didn’t have a pencil in a hue that sufficiently captured the rusty reddish-brown of the bird’s back and chest feathers. Which pencils would the Colored Pencil Geek recommend? Thrilled by the question, CPG happily spent part of a rainy afternoon researching the answer.

The research turned out to be an interesting test of my color memory: Several hours after I had seen the images of the kestrel, I started looking through my pencils to find possible colors, but I decided not to look at the photos again. I had an image of the color in my memory, and I wanted to see how close I could get to matching it by looking only at the pencil hues. I picked out 14 pencils, made swatches, and then compared the swatches to the photos. I was disappointed that I was off by quite a bit – my memory of the color was a cooler reddish rust, while the actual feather hues are warmer. In fact, as with most bird feathers, a wide range of hues is visible, so one pencil couldn’t accurately capture the full range. 

Shown above are the swatches I tried. The first three rows are colors I chose from memory (rows 1 and 2 are traditional colored pencils; row 3 is watercolor pencils). When I saw that the color in my memory was off, I searched further and found the six pencils in the fourth row. I knew a few would be too yellow, but by that point I had decided that a blend was necessary. So the final blend (shown at the bottom of the sheet) includes four pencils that I thought I would use if I were trying to accurately capture the range of hues I see. The swatches I check-marked were used in the blend.

At least two other observations resulted from this exercise. One is how many hues are called “terracotta” by various pencil manufacturers, but they bear little resemblance to each other. This reinforces the importance of seeing all colored pencils on paper before selecting them for a work, since names and even barrel colors are often deceptive. The second is that in both Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle and Caran d’Ache Supracolor lines, there’s a color called Russet (65), which you’d expect to be the same, since Cd’A makes both from presumably the same pigments – but they are very different.

If you have questions for the Colored Pencil Geek, feel free to ask anytime! 😉

Learning to See

11/2/11 My view from a studio window

When I first started sketching, I spent a lot of time looking at the work of other sketchers online, and one thing struck me right away. While I was naturally dazzled by the sketches of glorious cathedrals, monuments and other world-famous structures, what caught my attention were all the equally marvelous sketches of ordinary residential scenes. How are these people able to sketch an alley or parking lot and make it look fresh and exciting? What magical power do they possess that makes this possible? As a brand-new sketcher, I knew it would be a long time before I learned that magic, but I was eager to begin.

The sketch above is one of my earliest urban sketches; it’s dated Nov. 11, 2011. Still too self-conscious to sketch from the sidewalk, I took my baby steps by sketching out the windows of our house. It would still be several months before I had the nerve to show up at my first Urban Sketchers outing, but my spirit was willing: I was driven to show my world, one sketch at a time.

Nearly nine years and more than 7,000 sketches later, I have sketched on four continents. My subject matter has included a few world-famous scenes, and it has also included many, many mundane, ordinary scenes.

During those years, I’ve learned techniques and approaches from excellent teachers, many at Urban Sketchers symposiums, that helped me refine and shape the style I use today. As grateful as I am to all of them, none handed me the super power I kept thinking I would eventually find.

It turns out that there is no magic, at least in terms of techniques or tricks. Any sketch I have ever admired – whether it’s of the Eiffel Tower or a fire hydrant; the pyramids of Egypt or a utility pole – was made by a sketcher who had observed so closely and fully that I couldn’t help but see what they saw. That was the “magic.” And it turns out that all those teachers did try to give me the super power I was looking for: Every one of them told me that drawing was about seeing. But I didn’t always understand.

Below is a sketch I made last week. I still have a lot to learn, but now I realize that the most important skill I have to learn is to see. In fact, I now understand that as a sketcher, I have only one job: To observe so closely and fully that I can make anything look interesting, even the mundane. And by observing closely and fully, even those things I see every day become fresh again.

(This post was inspired by Stephanie Bower’s #USkThenAndNowChallenge to look back at our own old drawings, share them and reflect on what we’ve learned since then.)

4/25/20 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Like the Back of My Hand

You know the expression, “I know it like the back of my hand”? I would say that I did not know the back of my hand at all until the day I drew it. I do no know anything until I draw it.

Two Prompts in One: Our Kitchen

4/23/20 Our refrigerator

A few weeks ago, a prompt from USk Japan gave me the idea to sketch with my non-dominant hand. Although I haven’t been following all the group’s prompts, a couple more recent ones caught my attention: Draw from a high viewpoint (as a counter to the “down low” prompt suggested by others) and use materials not intended for art. I decided to meet both challenges in one sketch.

Years ago, also in response to a prompt, I sketched part of our kitchen looking down from the stairwell, and I recall it being very challenging. I didn’t have space in the composition for the corner with the refrigerator, though, so I took that on this time, again from the stairwell. The unconventional art material I chose was the inside of a box of instant oatmeal. That idea wasn’t original; Australian artist Peter Rush is well known for his works made on reused cardboard packaging. It’s the cheapest form of toned paper I know of! Colorful and very opaque Uni Posca Paint Markers (which I reviewed at the Well-Appointed Desk a while back) made it extra fun.

Product Review: Castle Arts Colored Pencils (Urban Collection)

Castle Arts Urban Collection 

When the Castle Arts line of colored pencils passed my radar, the price made me a bit skeptical. Still, as I showed in my survey of wallet-friendly colored pencils, I am always happy to be surprised when I find quality better than expected for the price, so a set of 24 for $15 was a small risk to take to learn about these. What intrigued me more, however, were the “themes” these pencils are packaged in. Of course, I chose the Urban collection.

More on the themes in a bit; first, the pencils. Made in China for Castle Arts Supplies of Wyoming and the UK, they have a round, matte-finish black barrel. A rounded, glossy colored end cap matches the core color, and the color name and number are printed in silver. Lightfast information is not provided.

I don’t usually show my entire swatch chart in reviews because I’m not sure how accurately the colors will reproduce on my scanner or appear on this low-res blog platform. Since the palette selection is an important part of this “urban” set, however, I thought it was worth showing.

Other than Cornflower Blue and Purple Lake (next to each other in the third row), which are too similar for a set of 24, this urban palette is close to my own. For example, I always like to have three greens, including a dark bluish one for Pacific Northwest firs. The range of warm and cool grays and browns is useful, as is the Indian Red for brick. The only hue I might add is “heavy equipment yellow” (530 Gold Cadmium Yellow in the Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle range), and this urban palette would do very nicely for nearly everything I encounter around here. Nice choices, Castle Arts!

4/8/20 Castle Arts colored pencils in Stillman & Birn Epsilon sketchbook

I wish I could get more excited about the pencils themselves, however. Neither soft nor hard, they apply with a waxy feeling that I don’t care for. Although they blend well enough, if I’m looking for a budget-friendly pencil, I much prefer Blick Studio in the same price range (it’s in my wallet-friendly review), which offers lightfast ratings and is also available open stock (I couldn’t find Castle Arts offered individually online).

Now I’ll talk more about the themes, which are the part of these pencils I’m most enthusiastic about. Along with the Urban collection, subject-based themed sets of 24 are available in Seascape, Landscape, Botanical and Portrait. I think these subject-matter themes make so much sense, especially for beginners who are just getting started in putting together their palettes. A standard set of 24 colored pencils from most manufacturers will have a decent range to cover most subjects adequately but will never cover specialties well. A botanical sketcher, for example, will never find enough greens in a standard set.

 

A total of 10 themes are available.

In addition, five more themed sets are inspired by specific artists: Cezanne, Botticelli, Monet, Kandinsky and Van Gogh. These seem a little less useful, but perhaps if someone is attracted to a specific artist’s palette, the selected hues will be inspiring.

The drawback to these themed packs is that there’s bound to be plenty of overlap among them, so if you buy Urban and decide you want to branch out to Landscape or Botanical, you will likely have duplicates. Or perhaps the same problem if you are attracted to both Kandinsky and Van Gogh. All 120 colors in the Castle Arts collection can also be purchased as a single set.

Paints are often sold in themes, but the only other colored pencils I am aware of that are sold in such themes are Blick Studio (Landscape and Portrait) and Spectrum Noir (Naturals, Florals, Primaries, Essentials and Shades & Tones). I think more pencil manufacturers should consider packaging by subject matter. If I were just beginning, seeing the palettes put together in these themes could help me develop my own palette with a good base to start with.

Worth noting is that the Urban collection comes with a five-step tutorial on how to create an “urban illustration.” As a how-to for developing a multi-layered, colored pencil drawing, I found it more useful and visually informative than most such “how-to” fliers enclosed with pencils.

The tutorial is better than most I've seen included with pencils.

This is probably a snarky thing to say in a review, but I’ll say it anyway: If you have access to Castle Arts in a store, take a look at the palette range for a theme based on your subject interest (shown on the bottom of the tin). Then, if you like it, walk around the store with it and build your own palette from it – with better pencils.