URBAN SKETCHERS or TRAVEL DIARY

What do you need?

• a small sketchbook (my favorite is the moleskine type watercolour Album 200g/m2 cold pressed 60 pages)
• a small watercolour paint set (look for it under the name compact set or pocket size)
• a small brush, if you can get one that has a reservoir, e.g. a pentel aquash refillable brush
• water (in a small bottle so you can wash the brush)

The first thing to decide is whether we want to draw it in a landscape or portrait mode.

If we had a small picture frame, we could use it to find the part of the picture we want to draw. We can use 2 L-shaped paper to find the picture cutout or we can use our phone and take a picture of the landscape building detail as a guide. (We can paint it later on, since the purpose of gesture drawing and sketching can be to make preliminary studies for a large painting.)

Let’s focus on the main subject that is important to us and add elements from the environment. We can also alternate between thin and thick pens, e.g. we can mark the shadow with thick ones.

First we need to draw the contours of the building or landscape. That’s why we practice gesture drawing.

We can pre-draw the picture with a pencil, but I prefer to use a “pen”. One of the advantages is that you don’t need an eraser 🙂

If you do choose to sketch in pencil, try to get a routine quickly so that you can abandon it as soon as possible. This can only be achieved with practice 🙂

If you get a little routine, don’t draw with a pencil, but you can use a permanent marker (a needle-tipped felt that doesn’t dissolve in water.) I like pigma micron.

Then you use watercolor paint to roughly give the colors. It doesn’t have to be perfectly precise. You don’t have to paint every detail.

I highly recommend the following book if you want to delve deeper:

Summary:

Travel journaling is also good because the many “sketch” drawings, the fact that you have to quickly draw people, landscapes, and sketch, develops observation, which is very important for making good drawings.

I recommend that you always have a small drawing or sketchbook with you, as you will find very good ideas for a larger work on the go.

Spend a few minutes with it every day, just a small drawing a day – it works wonders!

Draw a small drawing every day. Choose a theme. For example, trees, people, flowers, everyday objects, buildings . . .

make a series of them, for 21 days, mugs, vases.

For 21 days, your socks as you throw them on the table before you put them on in the morning.

Your imagination is the limit. I’m looking forward to see your series 🙂