Sharpening Your Mind’s Eye – Memory Drawing

Tuesday Tips and Tricks

A photo flip sketch done after studying the photo for about 10 seconds.

Let’s face it almost all drawing is, in a way, memory drawing. Whether it’s a past vacation vista or the second it takes to look from your subject to your paper, it’s your mind’s eye holding the image for you to draw. The trick is to develop that eye to keep the image true while you transfer it to the paper. The tip is to do memory exercises – the sharpen your memory the better your drawing.

Here are a few games to get you started.

1. The Photo Flip 
You can use a photograph or an image from a magazine or newspaper. Choose something in the photo that attracts you. Study and simplify your chosen image carefully but quickly, twenty seconds tops.  Now, flip the photo over and draw what you remember. Try it again with the same photo, this time study it for ten seconds. How much more did you remember?

One of my favorite books on drawing is The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study by Kimon Nicolaides (1891-1938) and one of my favorite quotes from the book is:

"Try not to remember merely the position of the model, just as when you memorize a poem you are not just trying to memorize just the shapes of the letters."

2. Quick Sips
Go to a cafe. Choose someone to draw. Observe them carefully. You won’t be able to control the amount of time you have since they will move. You can count on that! Now draw what you remember. Wait a bit and you’ll find they’ll return to the same pose again and again. Draw them again. And again. How do your sketches compare? While your waiting for them to return to the same pose choose another subject and use the same techniques.

Not done in a cafe but in a park watching my granddaughter play.

3. Red Light Green Light
When you’re a passenger in a car and the car stops for a red light observe what you see out the window. When the light turns green sketch what you saw. (Sometimes as a variation I may just see how long I can hold the afterimage in my mind. Of course this can be done anytime.)

4. No Erasers Allowed 
Rather than do a new sketch for each observation in these exercises try them by drawing over/correcting your original sketch.

Another quote from Nicolaides

“Memory drawing is a little like touch typing. If you try consciously to think of where the letters are you are likely to become confused, but if you rely on your sense of touch you can become very accurate.”

Powerful observational skills and a strong visual memory are a tremendous skills for an Urban Sketcher who shares a view of a fast moving world. Practicing observation and memory skills will improve your on location sketching. 

I call this a memory doodle, done totally from a memory of Casa Batillo in Barcelona.

"Random Selection"

TUESDAY TIPS & TRICKS

As a visual person, I have often wondered why two or more people can look at the same object and have a wide range of opposing reactions. Take for example the gas meter and construction site below:

Reactions to these photos might be mixed, ranging from "that thing is ugly!" to "so what?" Perhaps the only person who might think of the gas meter as a thing of beauty is the guy who designed it. How you think about something as mundane as gas meters or construction sites is largely dependent on your personal experience with them. Now let's look at each of them as a sketch:

Did your reaction change at all? Of course I am hoping that your reaction was a positive one. It reminds me of my favorite fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen called "The Ugly Duckling." When I chose to sketch this gas meter, I must have passed it a hundred times to and from picking up lunch, but one day something caught my eye. Did this gas meter suddenly become beautiful or interesting? Or was it always interesting but I had failed to see it before? According to Denis Dutton in his TED Talk "A Darwinian Theory of Beauty," he suggests that "beauty is an adaptive effect which we extend and intensify in the creation and enjoyment of works of art and entertainment."

How about these other boring or ugly scenes?

What would happen if, instead of walking up to a sketching location and pacing for a half hour (in search of the perfect subject to sketch), we just closed our eyes, spun around and sketched the first thing we saw when we opened our eyes? Regardless of its beauty or ugliness you have to sketch it. Imagine how that soiled plastic bag and paper coffee cup sitting in that murky puddle will look as a sketch by you? 

I would love to see the "swan" that comes out of your "ugly duckling."

The Ugly Duckling" (Danish: Den grimme ælling) is a literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen (1805 – 1875). The story tells of a homely little bird born in a barnyard who suffers abuse from the others around him until, much to his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a beautiful swan, the most beautiful bird of all. 

References: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duckling

https://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty#t-283839

A Sketching Resolution

(Early) Tuesday Tips & Tricks

The holidays are famous for taking up new hobbies, learning a new skill or proclaiming that the next year will be (somehow for the better) different. Perhaps you have some time off from your work, picked up a new device (as a gift or otherwise), or the New Year presents an opportunity to "start something new." With the looming prospect of a failed diet plan or an underused gym membership, allow me to present another resolution for the New Year that will not cost anything and could last longer than six months. All you need is your favorite sketching pencil, pen, marker, paint brushes or anything you like and something to draw on (such as a notepad, sketchpad, whiteboard, or even a digital tablet device).

It's called Urban Sketchers (USK) and we are a local community of artists who come together with a common interest of sketching in urban settings, socializing with like-minded artists and learning some new tips along the way. We practice sketching various scenes that often include interesting architecture, landscaping, people, animals and sketching anything else in cities, towns and villages in which they live, work or have traveled. We are a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to raising the awareness of artistic storytelling and educational value of drawing on location, promoting its practice and connecting people from around the globe.

Our local chapter, USk Chicago, meets at a different location in and around Chicagoland (so you see, we already have a support group!) which we call "Let's Sketch Chicago" and it is a great way to meet other like-minded sketchers and learn new tips and shortcuts. If this sounds like fun and you would like to check out the Urban Sketchers' scene, simply go to the following pages and look at some of the examples. And come to one of our next "Let's Sketch" outings and see what fun it is to meet real strangers from a Facebook group. We're really not that strange :)

We have this weekly series of posts called "Tuesday Tips & Tricks" where one new tip, trick or shortcut is shared with visual details at this link:

Urban Sketchers Chicago Blog: http://urbansketchers-chicago.blogspot.com

Here is where the bulk of our postings, shared sketches and discussions happen:

Urban Sketchers Chicago Facebook: Urban Sketchers Chicago
This is also where you can join our group if you are so inclined.

And the following links are more places where you can see our sketches:

Urban Sketchers Chicago Instagram: #uskchicago

Urban Sketchers Chicago Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/USkChicago

Follow up in Twitter: @USk_Chicago 

Color - Part 1

Tuesday Tips & Tricks

Let me give you the good news first: color can be learned! Great colorists of the past – Turner, Delacruix, van Gogh – used the science of color. Their color is no accident or chance.

There are numerous theories and approaches to color out there. Many are helpful and can be used for practical purposes with great success. We will discuss one of them - Color Theory by Johannes Itten. Itten is regarded as a father of modern color theory. Some agree and some argue, but the bottom line is that Itten came up with a system to make using color manageable.

In this TTT post we will look at preliminaries, color equations and a color wheel.

Going back to centuries past we want to mention Isaac Newton who discovered that visible light can be split in color bands using a prism and Count Rumford who discovered that those bands can be combined again to make something close to white light. (More on visible spectrum in Wikipedia here.)

Then it was then discovered that an object appears a certain color when white light strikes it because the color of the object is reflected and the remaining light rays are absorbed.

These are fundamentals. More interesting discoveries were made, but what is important for us here is the discovery of subtractive primary colors: red, yellow and blue. This is big! Everything else flows from here. In ideal world adding any two of these primary colors produces a secondary color:

Red + Yellow = Orange

Yellow + Blue = Green

Red + Blue = Purple

Basic Theory – Color Equations and Triads

In basic color theory the primary color cannot be mixed or made from other colors. All the other colors can be created from the primaries. Our color equations look like this:

Note 3 primaries, 3 secondaries, and 6 tertiary colors. They are organized into 3 basic types of triads (primary triad, secondary triad and 2 tetriary triads). These triads make a complete color wheel of 12 colors. If we take these colors and position them in a circle, we will get a rudimental color wheel!

Now this begins to look like something we have seen before. How many of us have an object like this among our art supplies, probably stuffed in the back somewhere because it made irritatingly little sense?

Perhaps now it will make a little more sense! Dig it out and look at it, there is some really neat information on it!

We will stop now, but with return with next TTT chapters on color and discuss color schemes.