Lake View Cemetery

11/9/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Arches 140 lb. hot-press paper

Bruce Lee fans would be disappointed.

On my way home from using the Blick Art Supplies discount coupon that was burning a hole in my purse (keep reading to find out what I bought), I drove around Capitol Hill looking for a sketch. I ended up at Lake View Cemetery, where a number of famous people are buried, including both Bruce Lee and his son Brandon. I’m not exactly a fan of the martial arts film star, so I skipped his gravesite, which is what many visitors to the cemetery come to see. Instead, I just drove slowly through the grounds looking for an interesting tree to sketch.

This time I remembered to take a Copic Multiliner SP pen to use on the last pages of my Arches signature – but wouldn’t you know it? I grabbed one that was out of ink! Argghh. But I was determined to use watercolor this time, so I struggled through the sketch with my usual Platinum Carbon ink. So much for Arches.

Now I’ll tell you what I bought at Blick (and you might be disappointed by this, too): a single sheet of hot-press Fabriano 140-pound paper. I probably should have thought of something more expensive to get a 30 percent discount on, but five bucks is a bit of a gulp for a single sheet of paper that I’m going to tear up to put in my sketchbook, so the coupon made it easier to swallow. Stay tuned for that test.

Like Pornography

11/8/13 Diamine Eclipse, 100 lb. paper

I often spend bus commuting time surreptitiously sketching fellow passengers. Today on my way to and from the Convention Center was no different, except I was particularly motivated to do as many as possible to catch up on my NaNoDrawMo deficit for the week (I think I’m caught up now, so if I sketch one or two a day for the rest of the month, I’ll meet the goal).

Looking at the five very fast bus portraits (see the rest in my Flickr photostream), I noticed that in the one I did of a man looking at his phone (at right) I somehow managed to capture his essence, whatever that is. I’d venture to guess that his friends would recognize him in this sketch, as the resemblance is better than most of my people sketches. But resemblance is not what I mean when I say “essence.” The younger man that I sketched listening to his iPod (below) is also a reasonably good resemblance, but I don’t think I captured his essence. I wish I could quantify or articulate this concept more clearly. It’s like pornography: I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.

11/8/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sketchbook Project sketchbook

Convention Center Redux (Arches Paper Again)

11/8/13 PR Velvet Black and Diamine Grey inks, Zig markers, colored pencil,
Arches 140 lb. hot-press paper

When Kate and I sketched at the Washington State Convention Center last month on our way to 6 Arms, it must have been a rare day when no events were happening there, because it felt like we had the place to ourselves. Not so today.

The Friday sketchers got together there this morning in the company of (what seemed like) a million high school students more interested in flirting than attending their college conference. At the same time, the Christmas in Seattle Gift & Gourmet Food Show was going on, where another (what seemed like) two million attendees flocked, so whenever I wandered around looking for a sketch, I guess I looked lost, because a helpful WSCC staff member would offer to show me the way to the gift show.

“It’s like a zoo in here,” Lynne said, sketching a fabulous view of I-5. Despite that, we all found ample seating and interesting sketches in the public areas. My first sketch was of one of the many banks of escalators between the second and third levels. Then I moved over to the same window where I sketched Union Street last month, except this time I chose the north side of the street.

11/8/13 Water-soluble pencil, Zig markers, watercolor, Arches paper

Unfortunately, after discovering that Arches paper in my current sketchbook signature doesn’t like fountain pen ink but does take Copic Multiliner SP ink fine, I forgot to bring my Copic. So I decided it was a good opportunity to try out different media that I rarely use. For the escalators sketch, I used mostly a water-soluble pencil and Zig markers. For the Union Street scene, I was curious whether the Arches sizing would repel water-soluble ink as much as waterproof Platinum Carbon (which I had tried previously). Interestingly, water-soluble Private Reserve Velvet Black ink took to the paper much better than Carbon. But once again, the sizing kept the ink from sinking in quickly, so I kept smearing the ink. Not wanting to muddy up watercolors with the water-soluble line work, I used colored pencils and Zig markers to add spots of color. But overall, I felt stymied by the paper and the limitations it was putting on my media choices.

A good turnout for today’s Friday sketchout and excellent sketches by all!

Slightly blurry sketchers. . . 

. . . but their sketches are all sharp!

Are Urban Sketchers Reportage Illustrators?

6/5/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Stillman & Birn Alpha

Gabi Campanario just posted an interesting question on Facebook: Are urban sketchers reportage illustrators? It’s a question that was posed to him by Christina Brunnock, an artist and illustration student who is writing a paper on this subject. In part, here’s what she wrote to Gabi:

I have had a few debates with my tutors discussing the urban sketchers. One of my tutors who specialises with editorial illustration believes that the urban sketchers are not true reportage illustrators and that they are more interpretive illustrators. He believes that only illustrators that tackle news based subjects such as conflict and politics are reportage illustrators. My point of view is that your illustrations are reporting everyday activities, culture and struggles in life which means you are reportage illustrators.
. . .

As reportage illustrators do you feel inferior to other reportage illustrators who tackle conflict and war issues in their work, such as George Butler, Sue Coe and Mario Minichiello?

I’m also debating whether reportage art actually has a vital use in modern day life competing against photography and film. In a digital world where videos are so easily accessible online, are the general public interested in an artist’s representation of the event or are they only interested in the actual event.

. . .

I am genuinely interested in the urban sketchers community and how they are grow [sic]. I am looking to define and challenge reportage illustration.

Gabi posted Christina’s e-mail to get feedback from other urban sketchers. Here’s what I posted in response:

Very interesting questions! My short answer is Yes, urban sketchers are reportage illustrators. We may not necessarily always sketch what is “newsworthy,” as in breaking news. But I look to my local newspaper as a model for that. Often on a slow news day, I’ll see photos in the Seattle Times of a gorgeous sunrise, children playing in fallen leaves, or the silhouette of the Space Needle against a crimson sky. What’s “newsworthy” about those photos except that some photographer captured an engaging moment – one that will never be repeated in exactly the same way? And so it is with all urban sketches. And that’s newsworthy enough for me.

And here’s my long answer: Above is a sketch I did back in June at the Pike Place Market. I never got around to blogging about it because I was busy with an out-of-town visitor that week, and we had been to other places that day, like the zoo, which I did blog about. But this sketch is typical of most of my urban sketches: It’s not about anything particularly newsworthy; just a moment in the busker’s day and my day captured in my sketchbook. Is it “reportage illustration”? By Christina’s definition – “reporting everyday activities, culture and struggles in life” – I’d say it qualifies.

At the same time, I do try to seek out newsworthy, current events to report on with sketches in the way that a photo journalist might. Although I’m (fortunately) not near a war zone, last August I made reportage sketches of From Hiroshima to Hope, a local event on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of that city that ended World War II. I don’t get these opportunities often, but I keep my eyes and ears open for them. (After all, isn’t observation 90 percent of a sketch?)

As for her other question, “In a digital world where videos are so easily accessible online, are the general public interested in an artist’s representation of the event or are they only interested in the actual event”: I don’t know about the general public, but I know that most of the sketches I see on the Urban Sketchers blog and Flickr group are more vibrant, evocative and compelling than most of the videos circulating on YouTube or Facebook. Sketches made by hand are as much about “the actual event” as anything recorded by a digital device.

The answer is Yes, urban sketchers are all reporting on their part of the world, one drawing at a time.

An ABC of Still Lifes (and More on Arches)

11/7/13 Still life A B C. Copic Multiliner SP pen, Van Gogh watercolors,
Arches 140 lb. hot press

Still lifes and single objects have never been among my favorite sketching subjects. I get the whole Danny Gregory Everyday Matters concept of drawing something – anything – daily, because it’s the process of regular drawing that’s important – not the particular subject that’s drawn. And in the early months when I first started drawing but before I discovered urban sketching, I followed Danny’s lead and drew a mug, a bowl, a pair of scissors, or whatever object happened to cross my line of sight. While the process excited me (just as it does now), I have to admit that still life subjects never did.

Now that I’ve committed to NaNoDrawMo (41 drawings to go in 24 remaining days), and the weather has taken a severe turn for the worst (buckets of rain, standing water on the highways causing major pileups and a high wind advisory through 8 p.m.), I can’t afford to be picky about subject matter today. Still lifes it is.

However, one of my struggles with drawing any old household object is having too many options: Shoe – but which shoe? The contents of the upstairs medicine cabinet or the downstairs? So to make it easier, I’ve given myself the assignment of making still lifes in alphabetical order.

11/7/13 Still life D E F. Copic Multiliner SP, Van Gogh watercolors, Arches paper

How did I get this idea? I happen to have an object for X, which is generally the hardest letter to come up with when doing an alphabetical anything. So if I get that far into the alphabet before NaNoDrawMo is over, you’ll find out what X is.

(Edited 11/29/13: I made it to X and, in fact, finished the whole alphabet.)

In the meantime, I present today’s three still lifes: A B C, D E F, and G H I. (The D could have doubled for C – both candy and chocolate – but those are Dove chocolates.)

One thing I was excited about was being able to give the Arches hot-press paper a chance with watercolors. The sizing that I complained about yesterday with fountain pen ink turned out to be OK with a Copic Multiliner SP pen. That same sizing, however, makes the paint sit on the surface for much longer than I’m used to, which made painting a bigger challenge today than usual. I suppose skilled painters prefer the sizing for that very reason – they can do more on-paper mixing and blending, for example, before the paint sinks in – but I’m a long way from knowing how to take advantage of that surface. (I did lift some color in spots and had to re-wet the paper a few times, and it did hold up well, as I expected.) And even though cold-press paper isn’t pleasant with fountain pens, I miss its organic texture.

11/7/13 Still life G H I. Copic Multiliner SP, Van Gogh watercolors, Arches paper

To further complicate the formula, I decided to try different paints: the set of Van Gogh watercolors that I received at the Urban Sketching Symposium last July. Some colors are the same as what’s in my everyday paint box (Ultramarine, Lemon Yellow, Sap Green), but others were new to me (Madder Lake Deep, Azo Yellow Medium, Cerulean Blue Phthalo), so it was both fun and challenging to try a different palette. If I fall in love with any of these colors, they are all in removable half pans, so I can pop them out and put them into my faithful Trader Joe’s tin. (I’ve already scavenged the mixing tray from the Van Gogh set for my portable setup.) And I used “real” brushes instead of waterbrushes – yet another variable thrown into the mix!

NaNoDrawMo and Paper Frustrations

11/6/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen,
Arches 140 lb. paper

Thanks to Kate, I found out about NaNoDrawMo, the sketcher’s version of National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo. Instead of penning a novel during the month of November, sketchers are making at least 50 drawings. Since we’re nearly a week into November already, I feel a bit behind schedule starting today. Still, I try to sketch at least once a day anyway, so 50 sketches in 30 days is a challenging but not an unrealistic goal. I’m in! (At least I am now. I had a heck of a time trying to move my images into the NaNoDrawMo Flickr group.)

Trying to move images on Flickr was only one of my frustrations today. Another was paper. I just started using a signature of Arches 140-pound hot-press paper. Having heard good things about it from several people, I’ve been wanting to try Arches for a long time, and despite some hesitations about hot-press paper, I thought its smooth surface would be appropriate for fountain pen. Wrong! My typically smooth-flowing Sailor and Lamy pens kept skipping and resisting the surface, almost as if the paper were oily. Maybe the sizing (which is what painters love about Arches) is somehow incompatible with fountain pen inks.

11/6/13 Diamine Eclipse ink, Sailor pen, Arches paper

Since most watercolor painters probably draw their foundational sketches with pencil or go straight in with paint, that incompatibility might not even come up as an issue for most users. But since I love pen and ink as much as I love watercolor, I have to have paper that’s amenable to both media. Disappointing! I’ll use up the signature, since I still want to give it a shot with watercolor. But I’m going back to the Canson cold-press papers that I was using before for general use. 

And my third frustration today was fidgety patrons at Zoka Coffee. They are among my favorite “models” because they usually stare motionlessly into their various electronic screens for long periods. I managed five sketches (see the rest in the Flickr NaNoDrawMo group), but today everyone seemed to have ants in their pants.

11/6/13 Pilot Iroshizuku Take-Sumi ink, Sketchbook Project sketchbook

How Long Did That Take?

11/4/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen, Zig marker, Canson Montval (left) and Strathmore 400 (right) 140 lb. papers

How long did it take you to make that?

When beads and fiber were my primary art media, I was asked that question frequently. Since it was always of interest to people, I started keeping track, which helped me to price my work when I eventually offered them for sale. Back then, the answer was anywhere from 20 hours to hundreds of hours for a single piece.

Now that ink and watercolor are my primary sketching media, I’m not asked that question as often. But in an ongoing discussion thread in the Urban Sketchers Flickr group, a sketcher said that he’s interested in learning how long it takes for specific sketches to be completed, so he wished that more sketchers would include that information with the sketches they post.

11/4/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown and Pilot Iroshizuku
Take-Sumi inks, Sailor pen, Sketchbook Project sketchbook

Since I was already in the habit of tracking my time from my beading days, I have always noted the time I start a sketch and the time I finish it on my sketchbook page (though that information is usually cropped out when I post the image). Interestingly, over the two years that I’ve been sketching, the length of time I spend on any particular sketch hasn’t changed much. Other than very quick gestural sketches that take a minute or less, almost all of them take from 20 to 60 minutes, with the vast majority finished in 30 to 45 minutes. (The only exception was my first of many sketches of the Köln Cathedral in Germany, on which I spent two full hours.)

In the sketch above at Green Lake, I was attracted to the juxtaposition of the tall maple tenaciously hanging onto its fading colors and the other tree that had simply let go of autumn and all of its leaves during Saturday’s big storm.

That sketch took 45 minutes. After finishing it, I drove to my yoga class and arrived 10 minutes early. Hmmm . . . 10 minutes isn’t much time for a sketch – but if I know I have only 10 minutes, I can make a 10-minute sketch. So I sketched another bare tree and the cars parked under it.