T&T Thursday

 Braving the Cold

Sketched from the Bus Stop Shelter at the Field Museum

Tips for Urban Sketching in Winter

It's tempting not to venture outdoors to sketch in the dead of winter. Be smart but don't give in!

Be Prepared

• Wear lots of layers. You can adjust what to keep  on and off.

• Invest in fingerless gloves or mittens with fingers folders.

• Bring an insulated mug with a hot beverage

• Handwarmer pouches are great too

• Pack only the essentials

Be Brave 

• Keep it simple!  

• Think process not product.Enjoy the sketching don't aim for a masterpiece.

• What says "cold" to you? Sketch that!

• Add a note of the weather conditions, temperature, etc.

Get to Work

• Again keep it simple (I know, I say that a lot!)

• Pack only essential sketching equipment, e.g.  a pencil, water brush, simple watercolor palette 

Odds and Ends 

• If you're using watercolor, a little vodka or alcohol in the water/waterbrush will keep your paint from freezing.

• Sketch from your car

• Sketch what you see outside your window at home.       

                                                                 

Post Your Sketches!

When you post your sketches let us know what tips you used or can add to the list!

Happy Holidays!

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T&T Thursday

Sketching Blindly

Through Years and Changes 

By  Alex Zonis

Some things get old - desktop computers? Some get obsolete - VCRs? Some even become a joke - telephone books lol. But some only become better with age - classical music, fine wine. Blind contour drawing belongs in this category.

Some years ago I wrote about blind contour drawing at a boring benefit as a method of saving ourselves from falling asleep. The world changed. Now we don’t have too many in person benefits to attend, but we have day-long Zoom conferences, multi-hour webcasts, online team meetings across time zones. Here is my old article is as relevant as ever!

How many times did you have to attend a boring event? Yep, me too. Often it is a fancy party or a benefit for some very noble cause you get to attend with your spouse. It is their cause, and you are just along for solidarity and support. Yawn! 

But don't fret! We got you covered! All you need is this:

A little book and a pen will fit in your evening clutch or sport coat pocket. 

• Get them out when they will begin speeches. 
• Keep your eyes on the speaker. It is too dark to see anything on your paper anyway. 
• Have the pen touch the paper and go. 
• Trace the shape of his head with your eyes and let your fingers follow with the pen. 
• Then his neck and shoulders. 
• What is he wearing? Trace those lapels. 
• Is there any hair? Add it, if applicable. 

If you want, you can glance down at your paper every so often - this is not a test.

When you have the basic outline down add some darks.

• Just scribble in any way you like to create dark masses.
• Add facial features without being too specific.
• Put in some details, if you have time: a tie, a necklace if any. 

You are done! 

Turn the page and find another victim attendee.

You may find that your heads are sometimes detached from shoulders. Facial features may land outside the heads, a tie may be pinned to a shoulder like a tail on a donkey. This all is fine and even great, you don't have to show your drawings to anyone. You will also find these sketches oddly expressive and free. And you will realize that you are no longer bored. In fact you may not even notice that they finished with speeches, and it is time for the rubber chicken. Good. You can sketch that woman sitting across from you.

What you are doing is practicing blind contour drawing.  Blind contour drawing is a method of drawing where an artist draws the contour of a subject without looking at the paper. This artistic technique was introduced by Kimon Nicolaïdes in The Natural Way to Draw, and then made popular in Betty Edwards'  The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Nicolaïdes instructed his students to imagine that the pencil point is actually touching the contour of the subject. He suggested that the technique improves students' drawings because it causes students to use both senses of sight and touch. Blind contour drawing trains the eye and hand to work as a team, and it helps to really see all of the details of the object. 

The drawings above I sketched blindly in the dark at a benefit for Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis I attended with my husband. The speeches were coma inducing and the chicken awful… I had fun!

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Let's Sketch Chicago

 Garfield Park Conservatory

SUNDAY, December 19, 2021

11:45 AM –  1:30 PM

Hosted by Rachel Pasch Grossman and Urban Sketchers Chicago

For our second hybrid sketch meet, we’ll be sketching at the Garfield Park Conservatory. 

You can join us on Sunday, December 19, at the Conservatory, or you can sketch there on your own, any time before that. Whichever you choose, we hope you’ll join our virtual throwdown on December 19, from 12 noon on.

The Garfield Park Conservatory is one of the largest and most stunning conservatories in the world, warm and revitalizing on a cold winter day. 

• December 19th, we’ll meet at the front entrance at 11:45 a.m. 

• We must enter as a group.

• Due to covid, the Conservatory is limiting how long groups can stay, so we’ll be having our in-person throwdown there at 1:30.

Reservations provide a one-time entry for a 90 minute visit to the gardens. There is no re-entry if you exit the gardens.

Restrooms will be open and are located at the front entrance, in the lobby. We encourage you to plan your visit accordingly and use the restroom before or after your visit through the gardens.  Water fountains will not be available during your visit.

The Conservatory is located at 300 N. Central Park Avenue, just north of Lake Street. There is a large free parking lot on the south side of the Conservatory, and there is a Green Line stop right there, the Conservatory-Central Park Drive stop.

Note: If you want to go on your own, the Conservatory is requiring reservations, which are easy to get from the website, garfieldconservatory.org.

If the Garfield Park Conservatory is inconvenient, you could sketch at 

• Lincoln Park Conservatory, which also requires reservations, or

• Oak Park Conservatory, which does not. 

(Plug from a local: the charming Oak Park Conservatory is a gem, with three well-established rooms, a small koi pond, and a couple of showy parrots. On-street parking and free admission too, located right off the Eisenhower.)

Our virtual throwdown will take place on Sunday Dec. 19 starting at 12 noon on our FB group. Share your sketches from this month and see what fellow members have created. To make your post easy to find, use the tag #uskchicago.

Banner sketch by Lisa Ridolfi.

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T&T Thanksgiving

 

Tried and True Tips and Tricks 

“When you go out to paint,

try to forget

what objects you have before you,

a street,

a house,

a field, or whatever. 

Merely think,

here is a little square of blue,

here is an oblong of pink,

here is a streak of yellow,

and paint it

 just as it looks to you,

the exact color and shape,

until it gives you your own naive

impression of the scene before you.”

                                                     Claude Monet

Happy Thanksgiving!

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T&T Thursday

And still growing!

What is an Urban Sketch?

By  Alex Zonis

We continue to welcome new sketchers into our group, our numbers at this writing is an impressive 1620! Every couple of years it seems useful to touch on the common topic of what is an Urban Sketch.

An Urban Sketch simply is:

• Drawn on location, or mostly on location. 

• The location can be urban or rural

• it can be inside or outside.

• It means that you are out there with your sketchbook reporting on the world as it unfolds in front of you.

There are some No’s too 

An Urban Sketch is not: 

• a drawing from a model

• a still life on a page without background for context

• drawing made from a photo

Through the most difficult months of the pandemic we became more lenient in our moderating and acceptance of posted sketches. Why add more stress to people’s lives - was the justification.

Now, as we are emerging on the other side of the stressful times, Urban Sketchers Chicago is returning to our core mission - sketching on location. This also means that we are returning to moderating our USk Chicago page to the pre-pandemic level.

Here’s our favorite graphic on what is, and what isn’t, an Urban Sketch.

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Cold Weather Sketching

Let's Sketch Chicago

Chicago Cultural Center

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

 12 PM – 3 PM

Welcome to USk Chicago first hybrid Winter Sketchmeet!

Our main location for November will be Chicago Cultural Center.

Sketchers attending on Sunday Nov 21 will gather at the Washington entrance at 12:00 pm. Enjoy in-person meetup, the beautiful space, and please take photos. This meeting will not have a host, so if you can organize yourselves for a group photo, it would be great.

Sketchers can start sketching this location now. We are looking forward to your indoor and outdoor sketches from this location.

Out virtual throughdown will take place on Sunday Nov 21 starting 12 noon on our FB group. Share your sketches of this month and see what Chicago Art and Culture scene is like reported by our sketchers

If getting to downtown Cultural Center is too much for you, please go and sketch your local Art or Cultural Center and share your sketches at the throwdown.

Consider: 

• Noyes Art and Cultural Center in Evanston 

• Logan Center for the Arts in Hyde Park

• Oak Park Art League in Oak Park

• Art Center Highland Park in Highland Park

• Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago 

• or similar.

Sketch by Alex Zonis

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T&T Thursday! In a Rut?

Getting Unstuck

By Gail Dokucu

As much as I love my art practice, occasionally I feel like I’ve hit a wall.
It seems that  all motivation and creativity have evaporated. I’m sure a lot of you have had a similar experience. I’m a big fan of Skillshare classes so I thought I’d share an exercise I learned last winter that helped get me back on track.

This exercise came from a class taught by one of my favorite teachers, Ohn Mar Win. While she’s not an urban sketcher, she does have a strong sketchbook practice and several of her classes center around sketchbooks. 

Ohn Mar Win “Daily Art Practice: 14 Day Mindset Challenge

Ohn Mar’s process is pretty simple: 

• Every day, spend 6 minutes sketching one object.  Set a timer when you start; if you draw the object once and still have time left, start again from a different angle.

• At the end of the 6 minutes, take a break, then come back to the sketch and do a short critique:  What worked?  What didn’t?  Did you enjoy the process or tool? 

• Each day use a different tool - various pencils, pens and paints.  

I did this as well my first time through. As I went through the class, I did the 14 day challenge following her guidelines. I enjoyed it so much that I extended the practice and kept it going for another 7 cycles, filling an entire sketchbook.

Keep Going!

At the end of the first 14 days, I decided that I wanted to spend more time exploring various brush pens.  For each 14 day period, I chose a different brush pen - Pitt B, Pitt SB, Pentel ArtBrush, Pentel Pocket Brush and Tombow Fudenosuke - and stuck with it for the whole period.  

During the challenge, I realized that one of the things that keeps me from a daily practice is not knowing what to draw.  So I made a list of objects for the entire 14 days before I started; I did 14 days of art supplies, and got over a month out of things pulled from my kitchen drawers!

When I had filled the entire sketchbook, I went back through it and made some notes on my observations. 

•  I found I had a strong preference for very soft, flexible brush pens like the Pitt SB or the Pentel Pocket Brush.
• Sometimes I avoid sketching because I don’t have much free time, but I found 6 minutes to be a sweet spot that I could get to every single day. 
• Having the list premade helped keep me on track too - no time spent each day trying to decide on a subject.  
• While these were not urban sketches, the process certainly benefited my urban sketching practice.  It kept me sketching during a period of low motivation so that my hands didn’t forget how to sketch.
• And the brush pens felt unwieldy at first, after 3 months I got so comfortable with them that they are now one of my favorite tools.

Even doing one round is a great way to get familiar with a new tool; six minutes doesn’t seem like much but it adds up and makes a difference over 2 weeks!

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