When people
comment on my sketches, they are more likely to comment on the amount of detail
in them than anything else. There’s no doubt that I’m a novice when it comes to
simplifying a scene to try to describe it accurately in as few lines as possible.
When it comes to detail I often lay it on with a trowel. This is often not a
conscious decision, it just happens when I make sketches. Sometimes I’m lucky
enough that it works. Other times, not so much.
Here’s a
couple of sketches from 2017 where I think that the amount of detail works to
the detriment of the overall picture.
This one I
made in Alicante Airport. It’s not a very good rendition of the scene in the departure
lounge because it’s far too busy, and there’s too much detail in the background,
which distracts your eye away from the figures in the foreground, which should
be what the sketch is all about. If I did it again, I’d pay far more attention to the figures, and
include more detail, and then just use some vague outlines with no shading at
all for the background.
This one has
the opposite problem. It shows the Charles Bridge in Prague, and it’s just not
busy enough. It’s little more than an outline. There’s a very vague suggestion
of some of the brickwork and some silhouette figures on the bridge. But that’s
it. To be fair, it was a very cold day in Prague, and after the ten minutes or
so it took to get this far, I was just frozen and my fingers were numb, so I
stopped, and I never found the right time to go back and complete it.
This is
another one which is just too busy. This is the Domkirche, the Cathedral in
Berlin. I caused my problems for myself by sketching it so large, which didn’t
leave much room for anything else. If I’d had a smaller cathedral in the centre
of the page, that would have given me more room to very lightly sketch in what
was around it, which I think would have worked a lot better.
Detail isn’t
the be all and end all. Here’s the very first sketch I made with a specialist
sketching pen.
When I made
this sketch it was something of a eureka moment. To me, this isn’t at all
detailed. There’s a lot of simplification gone on, and the shading isn’t very
subtle. Yet when I look at it, I see St. Katherine’s Church. I even think the
simplicity of the foliage in the background works.
This is just
my observation, but I think that the eye tends to be drawn to the areas of a
sketch where there is the most detail. Now, there’s no rule that says that you
have to try to make your reader focus on the dead centre of your sketch. You
may want to offset the main focus towards the right, left, top, bottom. But if
you have a very detailed area away from where you want the viewer to focus, it
is going to drag their attention away. If you have competing areas of detail,
this can make it difficult for the viewer to know where to look in order to
‘decode’ your sketch. So let me show you what I think is a far more successful
‘busy’ sketch.
If you were
to cut this vertically down the middle, then you’d see that there’s far more
detail on the left half than the right. In fact your eye should be drawn to the
most detailed area, the two figures in the foreground, and the bridal shop they
are passing. This is because this is the ‘story’. The two people are my son in
law and my daughter, who had just become engaged – it was serendipitous that we
passed a bridal shop, and I asked them to walk past it a few times while I
sketched their figures. Then I let them go, and I sketched in everything else.
Your eye is led down the street by the way that the details on buildings and
figures further along the street becomes less clear as you go further along the
street. I wanted to show a glimpse of Cardiff Castle on the other side of the
street, but kept the road blank, the trees in silhouette, and the castle with
minimal shading so that they are never a distraction.
More
traditionally, this next sketch places the centre of attention clearly in the
centre of the page. This is Dylan Thomas’ Boathouse at Laugharne. The danger I
found when sketching it was that the most detailed part of the sketch is
actually on the bottom left hand where the wooden beams and railings are by the
side of the house. This was in danger of pulling the viewers’ attention
downwards, so I used quite heavy shading on the opposite side, and sketched in
a lot more detail of the bushes around the bottom and the right hand side than
I might otherwise have done, which balances the railings, and hopefully keeps
the viewer’s main attention on the house. You might compare the bushes with the
dearth of detail in the wall on the top right hand corner, and the sea and
shoreline on the left.
Both of
these demonstrate that while you might not have much control over what elements
have to be in your sketch, you do have choice over the amount of detail that
you use. You can get surprisingly good effects by combining very detailed
areas, with areas which aren’t more than outlines.
* When
you’re in the early stages of making your sketch, look at the scene you’re
sketching, and think carefully about the areas which need more detail, and
those which would be better sketched in more lightly. Too much detail can be
confusing to the viewer, too little can also be confusing, and may not engage
the viewer’s interest.
The last sketch is one where I feel that I got the balance right. The most detailed area of the sketch is the Altes Museum entrance in the background. Everything else becomes lighter as you move closer to the reader, and further towards both edges of the sketch. The tree trunk on the right, for example, is hardly there at all.
