Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Summer in the City

We've been in several cities this summer: Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, and home in Portland. These sketches are from Portland, hopefully showing some of the looser style I practiced at the Urban Sketching Symposium.

On this quick car sketch, I started in the middle of the page and worked outward. The advantage to this approach (rather than starting at a side and working across the page) is that whenever you have to quit, the sketch still has a main focus and looks relatively complete. It's also good when the focus of your sketch is likely to move or gets blocked by something else.


The next sketches were made on a sketchcrawl with the Urban Sketchers from Portland. It was a cool, cloudy morning and it took quite awhile before there were some children brave enough to go in the Salmon Springs fountain.






In Inma Serrano's workshop at the Symposium, I learned to draw buildings very quickly, without worrying about straight lines, perspective or local color.  I've got to admit, this is way more fun than my usual, slower, controlled way or drawing buildings...
especially when the building is one like the Simon Benson House which can be overwhelming with all its detail.


Lastly, here are a couple vignettes from last Saturday when we went to the Farmers' Market in the Park Blocks by PSU.



2 comments:

Janene said...

I am loving these sketches! The looseness adds personality to your already great style. Maybe some of it will rub off on me...at least I am hoping!

Vicky said...

Thank you, Janene. I wouldn't want your style to change even one tiny bit! Love your work.