Time for Details

TIPS AND TRICKS TUESDAY - By Angie Hauch

In my urban sketching practice, there is one common theme to almost every drawing I make...

I didn't have enough time to put in all the details! 

Sound familiar? That unfinished feeling can steal the fulfillment of flipping back through your sketches and cause you to dwell on the anxiety of incompletion, instead of remembering the moment in time or the scene you chose to record.  Here's a couple of hacks I use to cheat time and use details sparingly in order to get a finished look, because let's be real, will we ever allow ourselves enough time to draw? I hope so, but in the meantime...

1.  Contours for the Complicated

Contours, or outlines, are a great hack for complicated things you don't have time to draw (i.e. leaves, trees, blades of grass, strands of hair etc). Suggest what is happening in one area by adding details. I find it effective to do this in the immediate area surrounding your focal point, and then hint at it as you work your way away from the subject.

In this drawing I knew it would take me all day to draw those trees so I worked in just a few details by the house, 

and with a quick contour, added a fully wooded dune in the background. Presto woods-o!

2.  Contours for Composition

Another tricky way to use contours, is to accentuate your composition.  Before you start to draw, ask yourself what (or who) is most important. Build in detail from the inside out.  In this setting there were 3 women drinking coffee and computing... I was really limited on time, and I could tell the farthest woman was already packing up. I chose to focus on the central character whose face I could study the closest, and used contours to capture the other characters.

The contours of the other women become a frame, and force our eyes right to the focal point.

Are you an urban sketcher over achiever?  I definitely was in this drawing and was far from finishing,
I decided a quick contoured skyline is so much nicer than a floating building.

3.  When all else fails... sign your name and turn the page.

When this couple got up and left mid-sketch, and then a waiter moved all the chairs, and then someone sat right in front of me... I figured this sketch was doomed.  Perspective is my enemy, and faking four chairs and table legs was simply not happening.  I tried the contour trick but even then, some lines and a big blank spot under the table left that bitter unfinished taste in my mouth. It was time to move on. I blocked out some boxes big enough to "finish" the drawing, and used what was left on my palette to date, initial and plug Panera. Try it! And then tell everyone it was intentional ;)

Figures in Motion - Workshop Recap

TUESDAY TIPS AND TRICKS

As I’m flipping through my sketchbook and mourning the end of summer, I’m reflecting on all that I learned about urban sketching this season. I especially wanted to share some tricks I picked up at the annual sketch seminar.  In case you missed it, here’s a recap of the class I taught "Capturing Figures in Motion." 

To warm up we took our sketchbooks to the curb and immediately learned two things...

1.  Figures are frustrating.

2.  Moving figures are super frustrating.

So what’s the trick?  Well, there’s not just one, but a BIG one that might make all the difference is having an open mind.  I’m used to long commutes and having a good 20 minutes to make a decent drawing, but when you’re sketching from the sidewalk, you’d be lucky to get a 20 second glance of a passerby.  You have to change your expectations. It’s a different way of sketching, but no less impressive.

20 minute sketch

20 second sketch

Find a busy street and set yourself a goal like, “Today I’ll draw motion for half an hour.”  I encouraged everyone at the seminar to grab a stick of vine charcoal. It’s really messy and takes some getting used to, but it forces you to stay loose and let go of the details.

Don’t work in your absolute favorite sketchbook.  Instead of trying to get a post perfect picture, just try to fill a quota: ten pages of blobby human shapes. Draw as many people as you can, as fast as you can.  Fill up every inch!  (Don't forget to have a can of fixative and spray each page before turning!)

The results may not be readable to anyone other than yourself, but you’ll start to build some muscle memory of how people move, where their weight shifts, how a pair of pants hangs etc.  When you look back at your book you’ll have all of these wonderfully expressive reference pages to enrich your urban settings.  Were you sketching a crosswalk and only got down half a woman?  Fill in the gaps by looking at some scribbles you have in your gesture library.

Think about it like an athlete; warm up sketching, or gesture drawing, is awkward at first and can be embarrassing.  There's no doubt it's a lot of hard work!  But keep at it and before you know it you'll have trained your brain to rapidly record motion.  When you do get a decent motion sketch, you should be really proud of yourself and post it everywhere!  You recorded all that information in a matter of seconds…  That’s pretty amazing!