Would you exercise and sketch at the same time?

Tuesday Tips & Tricks

Many moons ago, I had heard a lot about how you should do little exercises while you are stuck in commuter traffic–whether it be on a bus, train, airline or especially in your car with stop-and-go traffic. So it made me think, with all of the hours I spend sitting in a chair or at my desk urban sketching ideas or observations, should I be exercising while I sketched?

I decided to do a little research on some simple exercises.

“Calisthenics” are a form of exercise consisting of a variety of exercises, often rhythmical movements, generally without the use of equipment or apparatus. They are intended to increase body strength, body fitness and flexibility with movements such as bending, jumping, swinging, twisting or kicking, using only your body weight for resistance.

When performed vigorously and with variety, calisthenics can benefit both muscular and cardiovascular fitness in addition to improving psychomotor skills such as balance, agility and coordination.

Likewise, over at Smashing Magazine, author Laura Busche highlights the benefits of traditional sketching:

Extends memory: “The better you become at translating imagery from your mind to paper, the more visual resources you will have to draw on and the easier it will be to retrieve them in the future.”

Aids concentration: “Sketching stimulates us to a comfortable level — enough to keep us awake, concentrated and engaged… Some believe that we reach deeper levels of concentration and develop richer concepts when our own hands are the hardware.”

Allows for flexibility: “Because of our brain’s limited processing capacity, externalizing our ideas on paper makes it easier to restructure them, transforming the initial structure into a new one.”

Cool, there seems to be a common thread here that I wanted to explore further. I want to be remembered as the first Urban Sketcher who creates a series of simple exercises that can be done during sketching, especially at a two-day event such as the upcoming 2015 Urban Sketchers Chicago Sketch Seminar #uskchicago2015.

Here are a few of the exercises that I have developed (with a little help from my personal trainer). Give these a try and let me know what worked and didn’t work for you.

Disclaimer: I am not remotely qualified as a physical trainer or therapist. Please consult your physician to determine if a regular exercise regiment is recommended or will even help your sketching technique. If you find that your sketches have significantly gotten worse, please discontinue any exercise until you consult your physician.

Note: Don’t forget to pause for a drink of water as needed.

Sit Up Sketching: Grab your sketchbook and pen, lie down flat on your back with your knees bent, and do a normal sit up towards your knees. When you reach the upright position, place your sketchbook and pen on your knees and draw a few lines of what is in front of you while you hold this position. Then allow your torso to slowly fall back towards the horizontal position and repeat 10 times or until your sketch has been completed. 

Sketch Push-ups: With your body in a horizontal position, push yourself up so that your body remains rigid with your arms fully supporting your torso and lower your body with both arms at alternating intervals, holding your body in the up position for 1 minute and lowering for 5 seconds. Sketching is best accomplished while you are in the upper position. Repeat until your sketch is complete.

Sketch Planking: With your body in a horizontal position, push yourself up so that your body remains rigid with your arms fully supporting your torso. Your sketchbook and pen should be directly under your drawing arm. You may have to shift your weight over to your supporting arm while you sketch with your free arm. Sketch quickly while you shift your attention from your subject matter to your sketchbook. By the time your supporting arm starts to fatigue, you should be wrapping up your sketch.

Approximate sketch time: 10 minutes.

Lunge Sketching: Stand in view of the object you wish to sketch and take a big step forward and bend your knees as shown. Place your sketchbook on your lap and begin sketching the subject in front of you for as long as your legs will support you (perhaps 30 seconds will be sufficient). When you start to feel fatigue set into your legs, stand up and rest for 10 minutes while you sketch. Then repeat the lunge again for 30 more seconds. Repeat until your sketch is complete.

Alternative Wall Sit Sketching: Stand in front of a brick wall, half wall, fence or fire hydrant with your sketchbook and pen in hand. Bend over slightly into a sitting position until your knees are at a 90º angle. Place your sketchbook on your lap and begin sketching the subject in front of you for as long as your legs will support you (perhaps 30 seconds will be sufficient). When you start to feel fatigue set into your legs, stand up and rest for 2 minutes. You may choose to sketch while standing up during this rest. Then repeat the wall sit again for 30 more seconds. Repeat until your sketch is complete.

Bench-Step Sketching: This exercise is a derivative of the box step and step platform exercises. In this version, approach an empty half wall or bench (preferably without someone already sitting on it) and either step upon or hop onto the bench. Select an object to sketch, raise your arm cradling the sketchbook and begin sketching. Jump down safely off of the bench and back up at regular 5-minute intervals. Not recommended if you have bad knees, back or ankle issues.

Lower Impact Sketch Exercise Ideas:

Sketchabout: With your sketchbook supported by your arm positioned at a 90º angle, place your pen over your sketchbook and begin walking and sketching simultaneously. This is the same activity that people will perform while walking and texting on their phone except that you will be exercising your observation and drawing muscles.

Peddle Sketch: With your sketchbook supported by your arm positioned at a 90º angle, place your pen over your sketchbook and begin biking and sketching simultaneously. This will require great balance and multi-tasking as you focus on your ever-changing subject matter, the motion of moving your legs in a cyclical fashion, torso movements to maintain balance to steer the bike “hands free” and build your observation skills. Perhaps practice this in an empty parking lot while cycling before co-habitating with other vehicles.

Choosing the Right Paper

TUESDAY TIPS AND TRICKS

One of the fun parts about urban sketching is experimenting with different sketching materials, finding which you enjoy using the most, testing how each react with one another and even which compliment your personal sketching style.  While many sketching kit reviews tend to focus on pens, paints, inks, markers, brushes or other materials we use to draw or paint with, not nearly as many reviews (at least from what I have seen) talk about different types of paper.

Here are some things to consider when deciding on the next, all important sketchbook or paper purchase:

FORMAT & SIZE

• Do you want a sketchbook that fits in your back pocket or a larger one to carry in a backpack or purse?  
• Do you prefer loose leaf paper or a sketchbook?
• Do you want to use a square or rectangular paper/sketchbook?  Scrap paper?  Paper cups?
• If a sketchbook, spiral bound or hardbound?

COLOR

• What color paper do you use?
• Is your paper bright white or toned grey?  Off white? Tan?  Black?
• How does the color of your favorite ink, marker colored pencil or watercolor paint appear differently on two different colored papers?
• How does the color of the paper help tell a story about the scene you are sketching?

TYPE

• Is your paper smooth or textured?  
• How much texture is there?
• Hot pressed or cold pressed?
• Thick or thin?
• What is the weight of the paper?
• Can it be painted on?
• Which papers are best for ink?  For pencil?
• Is your paper water resistant??  Yes, there is water resistant paper...

CHARACTERISTICS & EFFECTS

• How strong is the paper?
• How many times can you shade that one specific spot before you rip a hole in the paper?
• Does watercolor buckle the paper?  How many washes can it take?  How fast does it dry?
• How fast does your ink dry on the paper?  Does it smudge?
• Does the paper enhance or dull out your drawing?
• Does your sketch bleed through to the other side or even on to the next page?
• Does your pen or marker glide across the paper or feather and skip?  Which do you like and why?
• Do you feel feedback on the nib of your pen, tip of your pencil or hairs of your brush?

Perhaps you are new to urban sketching and you have never considered any of these questions.  Or you are a long time sketcher but have never considered why you use the paper you have been using all these years.

I have been an active sketcher since 2008. One of the biggest observations I have made over the years is in which types of papers I like to sketch with.  There are so many different factors that come into play when selecting the right type of paper.  I hope that these questions give you a preview of the next installment of Choosing the Right Paper, where I will give some more specific tips that will help you think about the paper you have been using, why and how you have been using it, and how to develop and expand your sketching skills in light of all of the different types of sketching papers and options available to us.

Until next time, do any of the questions above resonate with you?  How has your experimentation with different paper types evolved since you started sketching?  Which brands do you prefer and why?

Andrew Banks

Color - Part 3 - Contrast

Tuesday Tips and Tricks

I hope you remember that we started talking about color theory in previous TTT posts. It was a little while ago, so I will remind you with links: Color - Part 1 and Color - Part 2. Today we will continue talking about color and will discuss contrast.

Contrast is an easy concept to understand. Renaissance painters mainly used value contrast; the Impressionists relied on temperature contrasts. But there are more contrasting relationships available to artists, we will talk about severn different ones.


1. Hue Contrast

Strong intense colors placed side by side produce powerful and dramatic contrast. Children and artists working in style called Primitivism use this contrast very effectively. Use as many colors as you like as long as they are pure and bright. If you add an olive green or a mustard yellow to the mix, the combination will stop working.

Hue contrast

2. Value Contrast

The squares with greater value contrast capture attention. The lighter squares seem to be filled with light and darker squares appear somber.

Value contrast

3. Color Key

Color key brings drama to artwork. High-key colors, like tints and middle tones at the lighter end of the value scale, are usually pure colors that suggest bright illumination, making the work cheerful and optimistic. Low-key colors, such as low-intensity and dark values, indicate dim illumination, create serious, sad or pensive mood.

Sketch in high color key by Alex Zonis

4. Intensity Contrast

Pure color stands out against neutral gray and low intensity background. The contrast decreases against the same hue background

Intensity contrast

5. Complementary Contrast

Complementary colors are the opposites on the color wheel. Placed side by side they enhance each other. Mixed together as paint they neutralize each other. Tertiary complements make unusual color combinations as they are less common.

Complementary contrast

6. Temperature Contrast

It may sound strange to talk about temperature of color. However experiments demonstrated a difference of 5-7 degrees in subjective feeling of warm and cold in rooms painted blue-green and red-orange. On the color wheel Red-orange is the warmest color and blue-green is the coolest. We can achieve multiple effects working with color temperature:

Cold - Warm

Shadow - Sun

Sleepy - Awake

Airy - Earthy

Far - Near

Light - Heavy

Wet - Dry

Impressionists relied on temperature contrast rather than value contrast to suggest light. Warm and cool contrast provides movement around the form, because warm colors appear to come forward and cool colors recede into the background.

Temperature contrast

7. Quantity Contrast

Quantity contrast is a powerful visual tool and one of my favorites to use. It is like an exclamation point in language, used right it is very expressive and impossible to miss.

Henry Matisse - Icarus

The Gift of Foresight

Give yourself the gift of foresight.

Sometimes in urban sketching we stumble upon something that needs to be captured in the moment. Other times we know a general type of thing on our sketching menu. For instance you might consider that you'll be in public transit a good deal for the next few days or perhaps you know you're meeting a friend in a park with joggers.

When you know what type of thing is coming, give yourself the gift of foresight. What does that mean? Well mainly it means taking time between sketches to practice techniques for capturing something you anticipate seeing.

Do you struggle with quick sketches of people? Does your lighting source chance too often in a long sketch? Do you have trouble scaling objects on your page?

If you know an area you struggle with is on your sketching menu take a little time and practice at home. By giving yourself a set time to practice one of your trouble areas on a something in your house or even from a photograph you can try out new techniques without the pressure of your subject escaping.

Bent-nib fountain pen sketch

This weekend many of us will be meeting up at Cloud Gate – The Bean – and frankly sketching reflective metal is not high on my skill list.

So one evening I found a metal water bottle and tried out a few different techniques for capturing the reflective element that always alludes me. This time I only worked with techniques I generally use for sketch outings. While there are benefits to trying new techniques, I wanted to see what was and wasn't working with my standard methods.

watercolor without sketch guides

First I worked only with a "bent-nib" fountain pen (by Sailor) loaded with black ink. Next I tried watercolor in only black and blue and without a base sketch. Finally I sketched the bottle again with a fountain pen and wet the ink with a touch of blue watercolor to see how the colors would shade.

Fountain pen sketch with watercolor

Trying out several techniques on the same object helped me pin point the strengths in certain approaches so that when Saturday rolls around I'll be better prepared to sketch without hesitation.

Have you every planned ahead when it comes to what you practice? What else do you like to practice before a sketch outing?

Don’t Look Now!

Well, don’t look at your paper; do look intently at your subject and draw it. 

Tuesday Tips and Tricks

Blind-Contour Drawing 

Too Much Espresso

 A blind-contour drawing is essentially drawing the outline of your subject without looking at your paper. I’m using the term contour rather loosely. It’s really a combination of contour and continuous-line drawing. Doing blind contour exercises can have real benefits for your sketching technique.

How?

• Choose your subject and decide where you are going to start. 
• Put your pencil, pen or marker on the paper at your starting point and begin.
• Do not look at your paper until you are finished! I know it’s hard but don’t cheat.
• Believe your pen is touching the edge of your subject and begin to move along the form with your eye on your subject and your pen on the paper. Imagine your pen feeling the line, the curves, each nook and cranny.
• Draw without lifting your pen off the paper.

Selfie–Yikes!

Hints:

• Think in terms of line, shape, direction, sharp, rounded, etc. rather than objects.
• Draw at a consistent pace.
• When you reach a point where two lines intersect or two forms meet you don’t have to stay on the outer edge but keep your pen on the paper.

When you’re back where you started take a look at your drawing. You’ll probably see some distortions, way off proportions but some areas may be remarkably accurate. You may also see an energy and sensitivity and an expressive line that aren’t present in other drawings. Whatever you see there are real benefits to blind contour exercises.

One Hanger,Three Times

Benefits:

• Improves your eye-hand coordination.
• Encourages you to draw what you see, not what you know.
• It helps you understand your subject.
• You become more involved in the process rather than product.
• Continuous-line, blind-contour drawings are a great way to warm up for a drawing session. 
• For urban sketchers it’s good experience for when we’re drawing in the dark, in our pockets or under the table!
• It’s fun.

If you enjoy our Tuesday Tips & Tricks you'll love our July sketching seminar! Check it out on FB, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and our 2015 Seminar Blog!

Urban Drawing Tools

TUESDAY TIPS & TRICKS

I am a graphic designer by trade and I bridge that transition between the old school art supplies (like you see on the AMC TV show "Mad Men" art department) and the invention of the personal computer. Simply put, I use a lot of drawing templates and old-school art supplies when I sketch. I am used to cleaning up my sketches with straight edges and ellipse guides to create sketches that are in reasonable perspective and scale.

Most times I am only armed with my sketchbook and a pen. For those times I will freehand my circles, ellipses and straight-edged objects because I have been drawing long enough that it does not intimidate me. But if the opportunity presents itself, I will do a little searching within my surroundings to see if I can't produce a reasonable substitute for a ruler or drawing template. If you aren't opposed to rummaging through a recycling bin or the utensil bin at a coffee shop, you can discover all kinds of free art tools. 

The following are my suggestions of found objects to help you realize that art supplies are all around us if we only look for them.

Other found items that I have often resorted to as make-shift drawing tools include (for a straight edge) a notebook, a yardstick from the hardware store, a piece of cardboard from a pizza box, and a board from a construction site. For a circle I have often found a piece of string with a pencil tied to the end makes a great compass if you hold the loose end down and draw around it. Also every cup, vase, planter, music CD and jar also provide lots of diameters with which you can find the right size circle.

Long ago when I was a member of the Boy Scouts, we even whittled end of a stick and dipped it in ink to create a rustic fountain pen on paper. You can get some pretty interesting lines from a twig that has a sharpened end. I am sure there are many more items that you will discover. Please go out and explore and let me know what you have found that works as your quasi-art supplies in the field. The important thing is to have fun.

What are some of the drawing tools you have found in the wild? Please share :)

Sketching Architectural Details

TUESDAY TIPS AND TRICKS

If you have ever finished a sketch, held it up and compared it to the actual subject only to realize that something about your sketch was just not right, this post is for you.

Between Barbara Week's recent post entitled "Off The Grid - Designing a Page" which talked about guidelines as compositional tools, and a recent architectural sketch I made, I wanted to "piggy-back" off of the topic of guidelines in urban sketching and talk specifically about how guidelines can help you simplify and map out the different parts of architectural details.

Buildings and architectural details can seem like daunting subjects to draw.  Thankfully, there are several observational cues to pick up on that will help you map out your drawing and establish an educated guess about the sizes, proportions, patterns and elements that make up your specific detail.  You don't even need to know the technical names of the architectural elements, or how they go together.  You just have to have the ability to make observations.  After all, that's half the battle of urban sketching is, isn't it?

(A couple quick side notes: 1.Check out a couple of my previous and related posts for a more full set of tips on architectural sketching.  "Perspective for the Urban Sketcher" and "Drawing Architecture: Sighting Size and Proportion" AND 2) these ideas can be applied to other subjects including figure drawing, landscapes, and most other types of subjects as well.)

Here is the scan of my sketch.  As you can see more clearly here than in the picture above, I used several guidelines in my initial pencil sketch before adding value in ink.  I left the pencil guidelines in for aesthetics.  Personally, I like how guidelines can add to the story of a sketch.  Guidelines show your process.  They add a level of technicality to the drawing. Many of the greatest artists left pencil underlays partially visible in their masterpieces. I think guidelines give an added personal touch, but this is just my opinion.

The image to the right is fairly self explanatory, however, I will share a little bit about how I approached this drawing.

I began by drawing the center line (dashed) guideline.  Since this detail is symmetrical, the center line is the most important guide to get you started.  Recognizing that the left and right sides of the detail have the same width, I added two more vertical guides, spaced equally as far away from the center line as I could have approximated while standing up, holding the sketchbook.

After I had determined the overall width of the detail, I used the sighting technique (explained in more detail here) to approximate how many widths (D) tall the detail was.  I found that the details was about 1.75 widths (D) tall.  Basing all of the approximate sizes off of one or two of the dimensions in your detail will help you keep all of the different parts of the drawing proportional to the detail as a whole and in relationship to one another.

I then drew a few horizontal lines.  I found larger shapes that I could use as benchmarks for the detail, so to speak.  So as you can see, (bottom to top) my horizontal guidelines fell on the base of the column, the center line of the window, the top of the middle column, the top of the two side columns, the bottom of the entablature, as well as the top of the arched pediment at the top.  Like in all other forms of design, there is a method to the madness in this detail's composition, which is why the sizes of A, .5A and 1.5 A all work well together, and were easy to approximate.

I drew the guidelines at the center line of the window, the top of the middle column, and the tops of the two side columns first.  A quick approximation told me that the bottom and top portions were half the height of A, and that the curved pediment on top was about 1.5A.

Now that the major heights and widths were mapped out, I filled in all of the rest of the details. (Column capitals, window mullions, arched openings above windows, additional lines on the entablature, as well as the dentils in the molding).  I did not draw guidelines for every single detail (although if you want to you can.)  Instead, since the major sizes and proportions were laid out, I could then "eyeball" the sizes and proportions of the smaller details since enough information was already mapped out for me.

This is something that may take a while to get the hang of, but once you do it a few times it will begin to make more sense.  At first, sketching like this may take a little longer than just "winging it".  However, the more you do it, the more it will make sense and will end up increasing your sketching speed in the end.  Learning how to sight size, proportion and perspectives were the most valuable urban sketching skills I learned when I was first introduced to urban sketching.  They are skills I use in almost every sketch I do to this day.

I hope this post, along with the previous posts on sighting and perspective are helpful.  Feel free to ask any questions.

Lastly, don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.  If you live in the Chicago area, connect with us through Facebook.  We sketch as a group every third weekend of each month at different locations throughout Chicago.

Andrew