Architecture Guides & the Urban Sketcher

Ever felt overwhelmed with everything around you while you're Urban Sketching? Or maybe despite everything going on around you, you can't seem to see a story in your surroundings?

When I'm stuck at either of these extremes I find that an architecture guide can change what I see. Whether by focusing in my attention like a microscope, or giving me a sense of something larger like a telescope, the context these guides provide revitalize the city to me.

Ooooh, there's a helicopter landing on that building!

Chicago offers several guided architecture tours that walk, ride, kayak or segway around the city. These options can be rich with hidden stories about the city, but as a part of a group, you can't stop and sketch whenever you like.

Thankfully there are other great options!

Books:
There are always standard tourist guide books. These books are full of fun stories about people and places in the city to jog your creative juices, but to those who have been in the city a while or just want something a little off the beaten trail this might not be best. There are also books like Walking Chicago that offer routes in a given neighborhood. Sometimes themes emerge on a given route and you realize you've been walking by 4 first attempts at various architectural elements for months without knowing. Another publisher offers 50 of these routes on individual index cards – perfect to tuck into a sketch kit.  But be warned, these haven't been updated in a few years so restaurants have changed! Though I have not personally tried their tours, I've heard good things about Evisitorguide.com and the free tour maps and information you can download from their website. Of course there are always things that are left out from these books (and website), but they can add a lot of fun to your sketch outings!


Apps:
The problem with books for the Urban Sketcher is that they can be heavy and a pain to carry with you at all times. Thankfully, there are multiple apps for that!

Several of the apps for sale look great, but the only app I've tried is a free one called 312 Go! With locations services turned on on your smart phone, the app will point out interesting things around you. The narrator will say things like "On your left is The Rookery…" then go on to tell you fun tidbits about the place. Using this app with headphones also helps prevent unwanted conversation with by-standers while giving you an inside scoop on the stories around you.

Looking to try one of these out? Itching to keep practicing the techniques you learned this summer? Perfect timing! October 17th-18th is Chicago's Annual Open House Chicago, where great buildings will be open to the public free of charge. Last year USK Chicago made it into several hard-to-visit buildings during the event, I can't wait to see where you all go!




Have you ever used architecture guides to help your sketching in Chicago? How about when you're in other cities? What other tools do you use to help you "see" your surroundings again?

September Morn – Nudging the Muse

Sea Grass, Long Boat Key

Tuesday Tips & Tricks:

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to school or even had children in school, but to me September is still the beginning of the New Year. It signals not only the end of summer but a fresh start filled with growth and possibilities.

Here on the USk-Chicago blog September is the beginning of a new round of Tuesday Tips & Tricks, aka #TTT. We’ve added two new contributors to our Tuesday ranks. Welcome, Angie Hauch and Ted Gordon! If you were a participant in their workshops at our summer seminar you know why we’re excited to add them to our roster!

A September Ritual

For me, September is the time I examine my creative rituals and make sure they haven’t become just unproductive habits. Dancers have warm-up routines before taking the stage. A singer vocalizes before a performance. Athletes have rituals, too. Think of a golfer, getting ready, stepping up to the tee or batter to the plate. Each goes through a ritual and the swing follows. Why do I have rituals? (I mean besides keeping me from falling down the social media rabbit hole of FB, Instagram, Twitter, and email.) They act as warm-ups for the day or project and flip the creative switch to ON. Do they always work? No, just ask the golfer in the sand trap, but it’s good to have a familiar process to help face the blank page.

Nudging the Muse

Here's a ritual I've followed for a long time when sketching and painting on location. It’s a four-step process.

1. Take a few minutes to look around the area, to walk around if possible.
2. Focus and ask, “What jumps out at me?” “What’s the story of this place?”
3. Scribble two or three quick thumbnails of step 2.
4. Choose one of the thumbnails to be the basis of a larger sketch and begin.

Long Boat Key, thumbnails

Sometimes I don’t get to step 4. I don’t even think about it. The switch has

been flipped. The ritual has done its job. I’m lost in the process and enjoying the ride.

Long Boat Key, thumbnails

#TTT

Research shows that performance and creative rituals have real benefits for those who practice them. They give us focus, create a positive mindset, and help win the procrastination war. If you don't have one give it a try. Do you remember something you did before a particularly fruitful creative session? That's a good place to start. It can be as simple as lighting a candle or listening to a particular piece of music.

In planning a creative ritual:

1. Keep it simple and easy
2. Make it unique to the action you want to trigger
3. Use it. Repeated use reinforces the connection with your desired endeavor
4. Enjoy the process

If you do have a creative habit that works for you, share it here! I love reading about the creative habits of others. 

 Recommended Reads:

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Weekly BobBlast by Robert Burridge

Anything by Danny Gregory           

Pocket Palettes

My first pocket palette from an Altoids tin

My love of pocket palettes began in the early summer of 2012. I was preparing to visit France and was enamored with the idea of painting Paris. But being very new to watercolors I wasn't sure how to travel with them. A friend mentioned using an Altoids box for a palette, and as I started looking for options I fell into the world of pocket palettes!

These wells are bigger than full pans!

That summer I made my first palette and it went to France with me stocked with very cheap student watercolors. I sat in parks sketching statues with it and there painted the first watercolor painting I was proud of. Now I know how huge the wells were, but overall I loved the thing. While I've since seen great tutorials ranging from using empty half-pans with magnets to soldering wells into the tins* this construction was easy to construct in an urban apartment and I didn't have to order any supplies.


*This tutorial has since been removed.

Mixing area as extra "lid"

The wells and mixing space were shaped with Sculpey^TM polymer clay inside the tin and baked there according to directions. After cooling, I painted the wells and mixing area white with acrylic paint to help seal the clay and to make the colors more visible. With use, the mixing area detached from the lid. Instead of gluing it back, I found that it fit well as an extra "lid" over the paints. After three years of use the tin is beginning to rust in a few places, but given all I've put it through a little rust doesn't seem like much.










After finding USk Chicago, I upgraded to a 24 color Field Kit of Koi watercolors made by our sponsors Sakura. It is a great kit with little details that really take it up a notch! (If you've been wanting to try one, be sure to join me for Supply Speed Dating at the seminar in July.) But I'm always looking for ways to change up my sketch kit.

Makeup case pocket palette (with two additions)

Last summer just before the seminar, I learned a new mix for skin tones and wondered how my sketches might change if I mixed all my colors. I planned to rework my Altoids palette but was too busy painting to think about a layout. That's when I noticed the eyeshadow box I was about to throw away. After cleaning out the remaining makeup, I had eight empty slots about the size of a half-pan! I painted the inside of the lid with clear gesso to make it a better mixing surface and put in my colors. At less than half the thickness of my tin it is truly pocket sized!

I love the Quinacridone Gold in the top left, but needed the tamer Yellow Ochre too

I used this palette for all my sketches at last summer's seminar, but latter added in two other slots for variations in my primaries. When I just go out with my smallest watercolor kit, I choose this little palette and a water brush. It even fits in the tiny pockets of women's dress pants!

But as always, I'm still looking for a better pocket palette to carry with me. Right now I'm considering making a trip to the Chicago Public Library to make a 3d print of this insert for a pocket palette.

Have you tried making a pocket palette or even several? What makes a watercolor palette ideal for your urban sketching? What's the smallest palette you've ever worked with or seen?

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!

SOLD!!

Tuesday Tips and Tricks

Flon Flon et Musette, Lincoln Square, Chicago

In the last few weeks I had three separate conversations with three different artists who asked for suggestions how to price artwork. I wrote to them separately in private messages and emails essentially the same set of suggestions. Perhaps if I share these suggestions here, they will be useful for someone. 

Pricing artwork has always been a mind boggling subject. And like politics or religion it seems to be a sticky and uncomfortable topic to discuss. But someone has to talk about it, so we will here. 

There are many different ways to price artwork. I will talk about one of them - the one I use - pricing by size.

First I want to share with you 10 Commandments of Art Pricing by one of my favorite art writers, late Robert Genn:

Thou shalt start out cheap. 

Thou shalt publish thy prices. 

Thou shalt raise thy prices regularly and a little. 

Thou shalt not lower thy prices. 

Thou shalt not have one price for Sam and another for Joe. 

Thou shalt not price by talent or time taken, but by size. 

Thou shalt not easily discount thy prices. 

Thou shalt lay control on thy agents and dealers. 

Thou shalt deal with those who will honour thee. 

Thou shalt end up expensive.

http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/pricing.asp#.VOpHrkIvc3g

When I first read Robert’s Commandments I knew that I found my pricing system. I started then and continue to this day to price by square inch. This system takes amorphous and emotional things like “This was complex”, or “I struggled with this one”, or “My sister really likes it”, or my favorite “I don’t need prices, I am not at that stage yet” out of consideration. If we are selling work, it it a good idea to be objective and consistent. This is business.

But can we get a little more specific? Let’s see the numbers! How much per square inch? A little research is in order. Find work by others that is similar to yours in quality and style. Browse art selling websites like eBay, Etsy, online galleries. Perhaps you will find a drawing 5”x8” priced at $35. Or  another one 7”x7” for $80. Try these prices for your art piece, do they seem to fit?

When you find an approximate suitable price that works for you, you can figure out your price per square inch. For 5”x8” $35 sketch, price per square inch is $.88. Take this number and calculate prices for your other drawings of various sizes. You will come up with a little table that may look somewhat like this:

6”x6”  - $31.68

5”x8”  - $35

8”x11”  - $77.44

12”x12”  - $126.72

How does it look? Too low? Too high? Adjust the price per square inch so it feels comfortable. Then round your prices to drop funny cents. Now you have your price list, it will look something like this:

Jane Sketcher’s Price List 2015:

6”x6” - $32

5”x8” - $35

8”x11” - $77

12”x12” - $127

Now, if you find yourself in a situation when a music band you sketched on a sketchcrawl wants to buy your sketch to put on their album, you are not going to be caught off guard, unprepared and coming up with apologies, like I did. Instead you can sound professional and say: “Oh thank you for your interest! Let me email you my price list.”

Flon Flon et Musette, Tunes from Last June. Artwork by Alex Zonis

Oh, and please note that this price list is good for 2015. In the beginning of 2016 you may consider increasing your price per square inch by 10%. Happy pricing!

Seeing Six Shades of Gray

Tuesday Tips and Tricks

Navy Pier, Chicago

It's been such a gray winter in Chicago that I’ve been seeing the urban landscape not in terms of color but as patterns and shapes created by light and shadow. As a sketcher it's made me more sensitive to value. Value, a.k.a. tone, is defined as the lightness or darkness of a color in relation to a scale from white to gray to black.

Many photographers and artists use a value scale to check the accuracy of their vision. The scales can be as involved as twelve shades of gray to as simple as three tones, a dark, a midtone and a light. You can buy a value scale at any art supply store or download one from the internet. I prefer a six toned scale and think there’s much to be gained by making your own scale. It develops your sight for awareness and perception of tone.

Making a Value Scale

1. Draw six (or as many as you choose) blocks about one inch wide.
2. Leave the first one blank/white. Shade the last one as dark as possible.
3. Fill in the remaining boxes to show the gradation from the darkest dark to pure white. For this scale I used a 2B pencil since that is what I often use when I sketch.

Using a Value Scale

Cut the scale out and take it along on your sketch outings. Hold it up to your subject and check the accuracy your perception of the tones you see. (Hint: Squint to help simplify the values .)

Try seeing your subject in terms of value shapes rather than named parts or colors. Both these squares are painted with blue taken right from the tube but where do they fall on the value scale? Which blue is the tone you may need?

  

              Holbein Verditer Blue             Schmincke  Prussian Blue

Which of these center gray squares is darker?

How we see the value of a color is effected by values around it. Using a value scale can help clarify what is actually in front of us. The center grays are exactly the same. 

The Value of Values

1. When a painting seems lifeless or dull, or just a little off, it’s frequently because the values aren’t correct. 
2. Rendering values will add dimension and light to your work.
3. Color can be a personal choice but the lightness or darkness of that color must be on the mark. 

Tackle your Toolbox

Ever put the wrong color on your sketch? Realize you didn’t bring along any water-resistant pens? Forget which pen skips on watercolor paper? Stare at a completely blank sketchbook afraid of making the first sketch? Or maybe you hoard art supplies and can't remember which palette has your favorite yellow? (Oh, maybe that's just me.)

Today’s Tuesday Tips and Tricks is my favorite way to help prevent some of those bumps in happy sketching. It’s especially fun because it involves using your tools!

Sketch & originals of my current palettes and tools

That’s right this is about sketching your tools.

 My solution to help prevent all these problems? Sketch my tools in each sketchbook.

Tools on paper over back cover of S&B Zeta Sketchbook

Depending on the book’s purpose, I like to chart out my tools in the front or back of the notebook.  With my first Stillman & Birn sketchbook, fear of a huge stack of nice blank paper kept it that way for nearly a month. Finally I decided to sketch my palette on the back of the front cover to help me get over my fear. It worked and I’m happily filling it with paintings! However, in the smaller watercolor sketchbooks I carry for Urban Sketching, I prefer to make a chart or drawing in the back. When I’m out sketching I find it easier to reference a chart in the back than in the front. In my Zeta series Stillman & Birn sketchbook, the endpapers are so close to the rest of the pages that I sketch my tools there. Those of you who received sketchbooks at last year's seminar should check the end papers in your sketchbooks--unlike other sketchbooks I've used, these are high quality and can often hold watercolor!

How to get started? Well, you can always just jump in and get started making up your own method. For those of you who less inclined to experimenting, there are great examples by other Urban Sketchers, like Liz Steel with USK Australia, who sketch their tools often. Here are some ideas to get you started and examples from my sketchbooks:

Here I only draw one pen & pencil to represent multiple variations

Pens:

• Draw one pen to represent multiple pens of the same type in different widths. Draw a line from each pen coming from the tip or under the pen and label its size.
• Draw your pens and make a line coming out the tip of each. After all have dried, take a wet brush or q-tip and run it over the lines so you can see (and refresh your memory about) how each pen handles water.
• Draw only your top three favorite pens. Sure your favorite may change in a month or so, but this will help you see which types of pens you like best over time.

Watercolor Pencils:

• Draw a watercolor pencil and a swatch from each color under it. Label each swatch with the color name on the pencil, then wet half of each swatch to see the color wet and dry.
• Make swatches of your pencils inside a rectangle or square to keep your pencils together. Label each swatch with the color name on the pencil, then wet half of each swatch to see the color wet and dry.

This was my first watercolor chart in the back of a pocket Moleskine

Watercolors:

• Draw the palette you want to take on your next sketch outing and fill in each pan with the appropriate color. Leave the     colors flat to see how they’ll look on the paper or practice shading to show the texture of the paint.
• Draw all of your palettes to help you remember which ones have certain colors without having to test them all again.
• Paint a stroke of each color on the page where it would appear in your palette. This quick method is still a great reference in the field. 

What about you, how do keep track of your tools? Are there tools not mentioned here that you bring along to sketch with?

Color - Part 2

Tuesday Tips and Tricks

This TTT post is a continuation of the Color discussion we have started last year. This is Part 2. Here's  Color - Part 1 post, if you want a refresher.

Let's talk about color schemes. If you leaf through your sketchbook, you will likely note the similarity of colors on your various sketches. We tend to find something that works for us, satisfies our aesthetics to some degree, and we then run with it.

How can we expand our vision on colors, get out of out boundaries of habit? Regardless of the media we use - paint, markers, color pencils - we can use the logical relationships of colors on the color wheel to control and expand our palette. This is where basic color schemes are helpful.

Color schemes are based on color similarities or differences, and usually feature a dominant color. Color schemes based on similarity are monochromatic (one color in different values) or analogues (colors that are neighbors on the color wheel). Color schemes based on difference are composed of complementary or triadic relationships, they are opposites or triangles on the wheel. An exception is a pure color contrasted with a neutral – white, gray or black.

I will give an example sketch for each of the 8 color schemes here.

Note how much variety of middle tones Don uses in this sketch. This variety give the image richness even though it is monochromatic.

This is my sketch, I use an analogous color scheme from dark red-brown through orange to yellow. This set of colors creates harmony. One speck of green punctuates this harmony, but we will discuss this in the next chapter.

Complementary color schemes usually have an added benefit of simplifying the image, like here a fairly complex market scene appears calm and relaxed.

Many have seen this amazing yellow plane at Architectural Artifacts at our sketch crawl. What makes this sketch successful is its pure Triadic color scheme executed in primary colors. Yes, I made the brick wall more red and designs on the rug more blue to make the triad more obvious.

An interesting variety results when we can split a complement into two colors. The image become richer and more complex.

Notice how yellow, yellow-orange and orange are balanced out by blue-violet shadows and recesses give the eye a resting point.

In my color class I find that this color scheme - double complementary tetradic - seems the most puzzling for students. That's until they realize that this is just two pairs of complements that are adjacent or next to each other on the color wheel. Like here:  yellow and violet is one pair, and yellow-orange and blue-violet is the second pair. That's all there is to it, complicated name non-withstanding.

See how the main colors of this sketch red-orange, yellow, blue-green and violet are positioned on a color wheel. They form a rectangle, this makes it a tetradic color scheme. Tetradic is a well balanced scheme, and this quality can be used in composition.

I invite you to practice color schemes to get familiar with them. Draw a sketch with each one of them. If it is an Urban Sketch, share it with us on our Facebook group. If not, just use it as an opportunity to practice.

Our next color topic will be Contrasts! See you then!