works of wanderlust

Tag: urban sketching

  • urban sketch, five

    I have a mere three sketches left in this October (sub)urban sketching challenge I set for myself.

    Good thing, too. The weather is starting to become a factor to my outdoor sketching efforts. The one rule that I set for my October month of daily drawing was that they were not just doodles of the houseplants. I had to draw some kind of outdoor scene that could be considered suburban sketching or adjacent. I have tried to meet this goal head on by ensuring that there was something “human made” in every scene, whether that was just a park bench or a fence post. Because the problem with the suburbs is that its all mostly single family homes, cookie-cutter shopping areas, sprawling parks and cars.

    I also loosely set myself the goal of avoiding when possible drawing from a photograph. The caveat to that was, of course, weather. Sure, I have sat in my vehicle and sketched what I saw through the windshield, but there have been two occasions where the weather was less than cooperative for my efforts and/or I put the sketch off for too long avoiding the weather and I found myself sitting at the kitchen table later on after dark drawing from the photo on my iPad screen. But only twice.

    In other words, all these vague and quasi-restrictive rules have done the thing that often drive proper art: conflict with simplicity and opportunity. I made the rules loose enough that I didn’t create so many obstacles that it became impossible to find a subject. I also made the rules strict enough that—as I wrote above—I couldn’t just draw from my couch or kitchen chair every day either. I had to go out. I had to go on walks and find scenes. And when I couldn’t find scenes I had to just draw what I saw.

    And that’s the rub, isn’t it.

    I went into this combatting another mental obstacle: my inclination to think like a photographer. And photographers want perfect scenes and clear subjects and all those things that seem like they would naturally apply to a good sketch, too. But there seems to be a subtle difference that I just can’t put my finger on—it’s something to do with drawing the mundane and the ability of a pen and ink piece of paper to become something far more interesting than a snapshot. Maybe it is the passing of the visual data through a human brain. Maybe it is the focus of detail through the fingers of a person with feelings and memories. Maybe it is the emphasis that comes from the interpretation that stops being as literal as a lens and a pixel sensor is forced to be by its own nature. Art is subjective not just in the consuming of it, but also in the creation.

    A single tree might be interesting enough as a photograph, but takes on a subjective interpretation when the shapes and colours and shadows pass through my eyes, swirl around my brain and shoot out my fingers as pen strokes. It is no longer a pixel perfect image, but an evoked feeling of a tree in that moment.

    heavy pen

    reluctant as I have been to use heavy pens, I have leaned into fine liners for much of my urban sketching in the last couple years. understanding and becoming friends with strong, bold black ink on the page is a work of confidence as much as it is skill. i am yet to be skilled, but i have learned a kind of confidence in finding the places where solid fills of black ink are not only welcomed but adored when they arrive. i too long thought of my black brush pen as simply lacking the detail of my 005 fine liner and little more than a blunt colouring tool. instead, i have started to see it as important as the page itself: white paper, detailed lines, black shadows, all of it in balance and harmony when drawn right.

    Don’t get me wrong. Many, many artists aspire to draw photo-realistically and a hundred fold people who are their audience applaud the efforts. I admire such skill. 

    Yet, Realism in art is just one branch of a towering tree-worth of styles.  Not every image needs to be a replica of a photograph.

    I’ll give an example that is one step removed from my sketching: I am making a video game. It is artistically best classified as a modern-retro 8-bit game. It is not 8-bit and it is not as simple as that implies. But the art style evokes an 80s arcade aesthetic. It is not trying to be photo realistic. It is not using the best of the best graphics engines to make it look unimpeachably perfect. It is leaning into a style. And while making games that are visions of realism is a fine achievement both technically and artistically, there is more to art, style and creating than replicating the capabilities of another art form.

    So here I found myself with a pen, a sketchbook, and a set of manageable rules that forced me to push through tedium, weather, uninspiring architecture and tight deadlines, all while drawing one image a day then letting it go. There was no working towards perfection day after day after day on one work. It was about sketching in the moment and ignoring the inclinations of a wandering photographic mindset.  

    It has mostly worked. I’m 28 for 28 with three sketches to go as of this writing. My sketches have become freer with style, and my pen become more willing to see a subject where my camera would have seen background fluff.  It has been good. And no, not all the sketches are good, but they are exercises that each and every one have obeyed a rule to create an minor obstacle to build a tiny bit of skill in the overcoming of it. And that’s been worth it.

  • urban sketch, four

    I’m nearly three-quarters of the way through my October sketching challenge as I write this and I have yet to miss a day.

    Two things have emerged from that effort:

    First, I think my drawing has legitimately improved. Doing anything daily is inevitably going to contribute to the effort of general practice and growth, but there is always the risk of hitting a plateau and not realizing any noticeable gains. Self-perception is hard. Self-evaluation is even more difficult. But drawing every day feels a bit like running every day: you build on the gains from the day before and the vibe is never really given to a recovery phase where things stagnate or decay back to the starting state. Whatever that metaphor means for the effort of learning an artistic skill, it feels like it is meaningful here as a comparison.

    Second, me concern for lacking meaningful subject matter in the aesthetic wasteland that is the suburban clutter that is the place I live has ebbed into a kind of seeking the beauty of nature fighting against the cookie-cutter-ness of this world. Sure, the houses and windows and rooflines all start to look the same, but the trees are poking out around them in different ways and framing scenes with a kind of pleasing quality that I am getting better each day at noticing. I think that is important. I mean, I wrote earlier about my struggles with getting out of the photographer’s mindset and of moving away from thinking of my sketches as photos with an ink pen instead of pixels. I think I am starting to feel that vibe a little more strongly as I plonk myself down in unlikely places and frame a scene with sharp inked lines to give a sense of something beyond what is just there.

    My plan with this effort was to re-prime my sketching senses before we head off on a vacation where I think the world will be significantly more sketch-able than suburban prairie Canada. Japan is graced with interesting architecture and a kind of shinto-driven aesthetic that emboldens spaces with a kind of symmetry and beauty that one could spend a lifetime studying to attempt to understand. I have a couple weeks to sketch it, so I wanted to go in hot and ready as I have ever been to draw it—and draw from it.

  • urban sketch, three

    In the meanwhile, my personal month-of-sketches art experiment continues unabated and, as of nine days in, triumphant.

    To be clear, not even most of the pics are gems. I have been partaking in the act of suburban sketching, which doubly adds to my challenge of (a) seeking out something to sketch and a place to sketch it and (b) making said scene of suburban mediocrity seem interesting enough to sketch in the first place. 

    To make matters more challenging, I’ve been mildly sick for the last couple days, which means going to sit in the park on a chilly October afternoon is not high on my list of priorities, even if doing a sketch kinda is. There was one particular sketch I did from the comfort of my living room window, looking out into the back garden with a mug of hot tea at the ready.

    All that aside, what my goal for the last nine days has been is embracing the clutter and chaos of a scene. Urban sketching (and thus I will postulate, suburban sketching) is very much about a Venn-like diagram of purpose and positioning (artistically speaking) in a way that overlaps with snapshot vacation photography. That is to say, if I were to walk out into a busy city street, stroll into a lovely urban park, or sit on a bench beside a cute little corner shop, I may be so inclined to snap a photo, right? But with a sketchbook in hand, and a pen at the ready, I should be able to stay a little longer and draw the view instead.

    thinking like a photographer

    i used to snap hundreds or thousands of photos each week, and owning, learning, and perfecting my use of camera equipment was a defining hobby of my life. small-p politics of being the camera guy aside, thinking like a photographer is a sixth sense for me and as such has been both a benefit and a curse. it is a curse because sketching is not photography: there is something about consuming a scene with one’s eyes, mashing it around inside one’s brain, and then turning the thoughts about the scene into monochromatic lines on a piece of paper with one’s hands, all of it taking place over minutes or hours of time. this is nothing like the instantaneous click of a shutter that turns photons into matrix of data that represents a near-perfect replication of the light that passed through the lens of the camera in that moment. thinking this way, though, has been a benefit because for years I have already been thinking about composition, light & shadows, shape, form, and style—all of which translate into a meaningful way that my aforementioned brain mashes around what it sees before it turns it into a sketch.

    In that case, the context of the scene is just as important as the focal point. And mostly here in reality the context of any scene is a little bit cluttered and little bit chaotic. 

    Drawing a building will include the vegetation growing around it, the shadows, the posters hanging in the windows, the parking meter out front, the cars parked in the stall astride the building itself, people, birds, trash cans, street grates, and all the lovely details that make the scene feel real. The camera wouldn’t ignore any of that to make the object one is photographing stand out, would it? Neither should the urban sketcher, I assume.

    With this in mind, I have been practicing absorbing the life that comes from that chaos and clutter: it all makes the scene seem more real, I think, and even just playing with the notion of adding as much of that clutter as I can while still retaining the fidelity of the art I am trying to put onto the page…well, it’s a balancing act. But it is resulting in interesting sketches that have made this little challenge satisfying enough to continue.

  • urban sketch, two

    Crossposted on Notes for a Sketch

    It’s hardly worth logging a few messy sketches but I will say since declaring that I was going to start a daily art challenge and do a sketch every day… well, I have.

    The afternoon after my last post I made my way to the art store. There are a couple good ones in the city, but I’ve been supporting the place near Whyte Ave called The Paint Spot. It is a pretty typical art store, crammed floor to ceiling with more art supplies, books and toys than one could ever hope to try in a lifetime. 

    I went right back to the corner and bought a couple big sheets of cold pressed watercolour paper. This is the paper we used in the art classes I took and my winter goals include trying to do some regular painting in the shelter of my basement when the temperatures drop. I can break down one of those big sheets into about twenty to thirty smaller canvases, so with a bank of nearly fifty to keep me busy over the winter I should be able to start honing some winter watercolour scenes come December.

    I also made the mistake of walking past the sketchbook aisle.

    Let me be clear. I do not need any more sketch books. 

    I have a medium-sized shelf filled with sketchbooks that are not even close to half-used up. But I do see a new book and get it in my head that, hey, I could use this sketchbook for just that project. You know, like for example, I walked past the sketchbook aisle and I thought to myself: self, what if I bought a book with the intention of using it for practice art? Like, what if I started the book knowing I was going to fill it with half-baked ideas and doodles and experimental stuff?

    That’s the other problem. I stopped buying cheap books. I’ve become one of those artists who buys ahem-quality-cough-cough supplies. That’s great and all, but bougie as that is I then draw myself into a corner of feeling like the art inside those pages needs to match the quality of the canvas. As in, I’ll buy a nice leather-bound sketchbook then feel this overwhelming sense that every picture needs to be good enough to be drawn in a leather-bound sketchbook. It is a bit stifling, to be honest.

    suburban sketching

    there are no strict rules for what makes and urban sketch, I suppose. one could reflect upon the philosophical nature of an art form that was perhaps conceived as a kind of tourist snapshot art form, visiting a place of architectural urban beauty, a place built by people, and turning it into a sketched scene upon a piece of paper or in a notebook as kind of plein air reference art form. if one lives in a place of cultural significance or often visits those places then urban sketching is a revelatory form of personal expression, finding an excuse to sit for a while and take in a scene, soak it in with ones eyes and translate it to scribbles on a page. my reintroduction to the sport was inspired, actually, by a visit to dublin where I sought out an art supply store so that I could compensate for my lack of planning and find something to urban sketch the city. but if one lives, say, in the suburban outskirts of a small-ish and insignificant city on the canadian prairies where nothing much of architectural consequence exists then one is thereafter reduced to sketching little more than cookie cutter houses and chain restaurants and neatly planned community sprawl. to differentiate that as suburban sketching seems fair.

    So, yeah, art store got a few of my bucks and I bought a nice “practice” sketchbook that I have deemed will be messy and disordered and full of whatever drawings in whatever form I choose. 

    I have drawn in that book four times. 

    And I have drawn in one of my bougie books thrice, contributing there to my daily challenge requirements of a sketchy urban sketch.

    Oh, and you thought art was relaxing, huh?

  • A Neglected Blog Update

    I really hate writing those posts that wax apologetic for not writing for some span of time, promising to do better, and lamenting that life is just so busy that — gosh! — if only there were an extra hour each day…

    I’ve been refocused other places, and in the blur of spring snow storms and back to work and another mess of COVID infections in every other person I know, I’ve not had too much interesting to write about.

    Not too much…

    A little bit.

    I’ve been running a lot. I ran a ten miler (sixteen klick) race on the weekend, a race for which I aggressively overdressed as a result of waking up at 6am while it was still frosty outside for a 9am start when the sun had turned it into a nice day. I’d been training really well, too, completing a two week streak at the start of April as I ran every day to get into the spring fitness mode, and started the annual hill training regimen. The icy sidewalks cleared just as March ended and despite a few mornings with fresh spring snow the trails have been ideal for plodding along and burning in some mileage. All that said, and as April nears an end, I’m solidly bagged and could use a breather for a day or two.

    I’ve been drawing a lot. It seems odd that an old obsession has resurfaced so acutely in my life. My back-to-work bag is half-stuffed with sketchbooks and pens alongside my laptop and folios. I spend lunch breaks finding quiet places to sit and draw little mini artworks downtown. And back at home, I’ve been taking courses in watercolour, mostly online but in a couple weeks an in-person flower-painting session in the local conservatory, as I hone my painting skills and start to generate images that are more than just muddy smudges on expensive paper.

    I’ve been getting ready for adventure. Last summer we had bought ourselves two inflatable kayaks. The first was a cheaper model that was more of a toy, but it was in stock. The second was backordered, significantly higher end (as far as inflatable recreational sports equipment goes anyhow) and didn’t arrive on our doorstep until the fall as the waterways were starting to ice over. I’ve unpacked all that equipment and I’ve started making some plans for some down-river excursions as the days get a little warmer (it’s snowing again this morning as I write this!) A day-long traversal of the city by kayak in June seems like a great idea.

    And I’ve been cooking. Re-adjusting my bread-baking schedule around back-to-the-office has been a small challenge and reminded me why I didn’t do it so much back prior to pandemic times. And having cleaned up both the barbecue and the outdoor firepit, this upcoming weekend is looking hopeful as the seasonal inaugural outdoor cookoff, with some grilled meats and veggies atop an open backyard fire, complete with whatever I can think to cook in those cast iron pans that have been wasting their adventure potential indoors on a gas stove rather than over open flame.

    I’ll write more soon. I promise.

    If only there were another hour in the day.