The Urban Sketching Handbook Techniques for Beginners

How to Build a Practice for Sketching on Location

Suhita Shirodkar

• Publisher: Quarry Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781631599309
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Techniques

In The Urban Sketching Handbook: Techniques for Beginners, artist and Urban Sketcher correspondent Suhita Shirodkar shares essential skills for sketching architecture, people, and everyday objects on location. You'll learn the basics of value, color mixing, and perspective through helpful studies and exercises, whether at home, in studio, and on location. The Urban Sketching Handbook: Techniques for Beginners is perfect for anyone who's just getting started in this fascinating art form, or who wants to develop their observational and drawing aptitude by reinforcing basic concepts. The Urban Sketching Handbook series offers location artists expert instruction on creative techniques, on-location tips and advice, and an abundance of visual inspiration. These handy references come in a compact, easy-to-carry format—perfect to toss in your backpack or artist's tote.

KEY I

STARTING OUT

Pens, pencils, paints, sketchbooks, and a zillion other products. Who doesn’t love playing with them all? But the choices can get overwhelming. And too large a kit actually makes urban sketching a more complicated endeavor than it should be.

If you think about it, you really need only two things to sketch: a surface to draw on and a tool to make marks with.

Keep it simple and focus on learning to see.

Every once in a while, I sort through my sketch kit and pare it down to keep it lightweight and simple.

SUHITA SHIRODKAR

Sorting through Supplies

8" × 11" | 20.3 × 27.9 cm; ink and watercolor

This is Gabriel Campanario’s go-to kit: a ballpoint pen and a small sketchbook. Especially if you’re a beginning sketcher, Gabriel strongly recommends not rushing into color but starting instead with a ballpoint pen or a pencil.

GABRIEL CAMPANARIO

Olive Tree and Wheelbarrow

7" × 51/2" | 17.8 × 13.9 cm; ballpoint pen

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

At the core of all sketching kits, no matter how simple or complex, are three things: line-making tools, shape-making tools, and a surface to draw on. Everything else is an accessory.

The simpler you keep it, the more you will get out of your sketch kit. The best sketch kits have all the tools you want but are compact enough to carry with you almost anywhere.

Let’s build a sketch kit step by step. You can also use this method to pare down and simplify your sketch kit by dividing up your supplies by category and seeing what you can live without.

Building a Sketch Kit

1. What Will You Sketch On?

• A sketchbook. Keep it small and simple. If you’ll use only dry media, choose one with thinner paper. Not sure what media you will use? A mixed-media sketchbook can handle lots of different media, wet or dry.

OR

• If you plan on sketching digitally, you’ll be using a tablet and an app to sketch in. (If you enjoy sketching digitally, you might like The Urban Sketching Handbook: Drawing with a Tablet by Uma Kelkar.)

2. Next, You Need Something to Draw With

• A pencil is very forgiving because it erases easily. Graphite pencils vary from harder pencils, which make lighter marks, to softer ones, which make darker, smudgier marks. Find a couple you like the feel of and add them to your kit.

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