One Sketch 318) (Weds 6th Feb) Bucket List Destination

Venice Venice Venice
Place not to forgetto
It's still on my bucket list
So is the cornetto.

Yes, prompt on weds was Bucket list destination, and this (the Rialto Bridge as much as Venice itself) was the first thing I could come up with. 90 mins start to finish in Art Group.

One Sketch 316) (Monday 4th Feb) Iron Bridge

Let the waters flow
In this bridge we trust
Been there since 1781
Hope it's safe from rust.

I visited Iron Bridge in 1781. It's a hell of a lot more impressive than it looks in this picture, and a great place to visit. Being the first actual iron bridge, a lot of the techniques used to fit pieces of the bridge together were actually techniques used in wooden bridge making - mainly because there were not metal bridge making techniques yet.

One Sketch 292) No. 2 Tram by the banks of the Danube in Budapest

By the banks of the Danube Blue
You can ride on a lovely tram too

Blimey, that's a terrible verse. Still, the picture isn't so bad. The scanner doesn't bring out all the colours perfectly, but at least I think you can see that I'm getting more confident in using watercolour in an urban sketching style.

I visited Budapest back in the tail end of 2017. I liked what I saw, but I just wasn't there long enough to really do anything more than think about scratching the surface. I did ride on some trams though! And sketch them too - here's the 2 line sketches I made during the trip: -

One Sketch 291) Tower Bridge

Maybe it's because
I'm a Londoner.
- No maybe about it.

Okay, so, the prompt on Sketching Every Day today was - famous or not so famous landmark. Well, I'm very sorry , but whenever I hear the word landmark, my first thought is normally of my hometown of London. Yeah, I haven't lived in London for over 30 years, but I was born there, I grew up there, and I went to London University. You can take me out of London, but you can't take London out of me. I quite like to compare this to a sketch I made of Tower Bridge last year -

Now, this isn't a bad sketch. I quite like the sky. But I'd like to think I'm now using colour more effectively.

Ian Fennelly

This is a bit of a long and not all that interesting story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. You know about Sketching Every Day, yes? Well, one of the things that I do tend to do is to check out the prompts which are coming up for the next few days. Four times a month of so we have a different featured artist. You can take the prompt however you like. You can copy one of their works, or make your own work in the same style, or make a portrait of the artist, whatever. Coming up on the 29th December we have Ian Fennelly. I didn't know his work before, but he is simply the most brilliant urban sketcher.

Now, you may recall in the past I have explained how unhappy I am with my lack of ability to use watercolour effectively when making an urban sketch. So it came to mind that, since I'm going to be making an Ian Fennelly copy, or at the very least an Ian Fennelly inspired sketch, I could try to copy what he did in an urban sketch which I love, and hope to learn something in the process. Have I learned anything? Well, maybe, although I think it's the sort of thing which is going to take more than just the one lesson before it is going to sink in. Still, I'm very pleased with what I've made today. This is a copy of one of Ian Fennelly's pictures of the Eastgate in the city of Chester. And no, it is NOWHERE near as good as the original. The main thing is it's miles better than anything I would have come up with by myself. Looking dispassionately, I think you can see that I'm still being too timid with colour, and this is something to take forward into the next attempt.

Wednesday 31st October - One Sketch 220) Canal Bridge - Amsterdam

This took an hour to sketch
Before I rose
And while I sat and sketched
My fingers froze.

So much of the centre of Amsterdam looks like this. It's all achingly pretty, and I'd love to have sketched more of it. However, my hands were so cold by the time I stopped doing thi, my fingers were shaking.

One Sketch 215) #inktober2018 prompt 26 - stretch

Mighty symbol
of power and pride
A nod to the cathedrals
of Europe
A physical stretch
And a leap of the imagination

I've told you before that I love bridges. Just looking at the Brooklyn Bridge - which spans the East River and not, as the unitiated think, the Hudson - is enough to inspire awe. How much more, then, when you know the story of its construction. A truly monumental undertaking, right up there in iconic status with the Statue of Liberty and the Epire State Building.

One Sketch #175) Newport Transporter Bridge

Each crossing
Feels like time travel
My car becomes
A Tardis.

Newport Transporter Bridge. Newport is South Wales' newest city, having been granted city status in 2002 for the Queen's Golden Jubilee. It is actually the third largest city in Wales after nearby Cardiff, and Swansea. The transporter bridge is it's most instantly recognisable structure, and is one of only two working transporter bridges in Britain. Cars drive and passengers walk onto a gondola which is suspended by cables from the main gantry crossing the river. the gondola then crosses the river, and passengers and cars disembark from the other time. It's a wonderful piece of Edwardiana, dating back to 1906. Bridges are one of many things that I love, and this is one of my favourites.

One Sketch #129) The Elizabeth Tower - Big Ben

Nostalgia
Homesickness
One man's meat
Another's poison.
Maybe it's because
I'm a Londoner.

Another prompt from the Sketching Every Day Facebook group. This one was to make a sketch using an iconic symbol from any country. Well, mine's as good a place to start as any, I would say. I live in Wales - and in fact I've spent more of my life living in Wales than in England - but the fact is that I am English, and still think of myself as a Londoner. So an iconic symbol of London it was.

I've produced a sketch of Tower Bridge in the past, so I didn't really want to do that again just now.

 Which still left Big Ben, the Tower, and St. Paul's. What I liked about this was that as well as the iconic clock tower, it also shows a red double decker London bus, and the framework shows us looking out from inside a red phone box. Incidentally, I didn't actually plan it this way, but the red framework is suggestive of the Cross of St. George, as on the English flag.

Sketching Tips 8) Sketching Vehicles

I don’t think there’s any special skill involved in sketching vehicles, but maybe what makes a difference is whether you like vehicles for their own sake or not. For example, there’s a world of difference between a sketch which has cars in it: -

And a sketch of a car: -

In the top picture it’s the footbridge which is the star. The cars, which are not particularly detailed and not brilliantly drawn, are just there to give the footbridge context and scale. In the second picture, the street furniture, the wall and the car behind are just outlines, which serve to highlight the car itself which is the star of the picture. If the cars are just a background feature, then you really don’t need many lines to suggest the shape of a car to the eye of the beholder. 

So, when you’ve decided that the car – or tram, bus or train – is the star of the picture, what then? Well, the first thing you need to think of is composition, and what I mean by that is, where are you going to put the viewer in relation to the vehicle. I’ll give a couple of examples to help explain this.  In this picture :-

- you can see that we, the viewers, are looking down onto the Bubble Car. This is appropriate, since it helps emphasise the diminutive size of the car which is one of its most interesting features. By the same token in this picture,

we’re looking up at the train. Our eyeline is roughly level with the bottom of the door nearest too us. This, and the rather extreme perspective serve to emphasise the train’s great size, power and speed.

Once you’ve worked out the viewer’s viewpoint in relation to the vehicle, then it’s worth spending some time deciding just how you’d like to contextualise the vehicle. I’ll explain that. Both of the vehicles above appear on the page themselves without any background. That’s because in those pictures I’m only interested in the qualities of the vehicle itself, and didn’t feel the need to contextualise them. However, adding background can help your sketch say more about the vehicle, and it’s not a bad thing to spend a bit of time considering just how much background, if any, you want to use. For example:-

The very light foliage in the background of this beautiful Jaguar XK120 conjures up an image of driving down summer country lanes with the top down. On this next picture:-

the railings and shaded shoreline are just enough to place this ice cream van at the seaside. With this Swansea tram:-

- I felt that the edge of the platform, the passengers and the pole carrying the cable overhead were enough to contextualise it. This can be compared with :-

Where I really wanted to include all the background details to help put it within a place and time within my childhood. This picture isn’t about the train so much as its about my memories of using the Tube, taking it to interesting places to see and things to do.

With this sketch, if you take away the airport buildings then it’s just a single decker bus, so the context is important to this sketch.

As for sketching in the vehicle itself, as with anything else you sketch it is a matter of looking, looking, looking, of getting the shapes right, and applying the shade in the right amount, in the right places. It sounds simple when you say it like that. Yet it needn’t be that complicated either. If you decide to go for a heavy contrast between areas of light and shade, you can end up with something like this:-

It's an effective depiction of a tank engine, even though the train itself really wasn’t a very complicated sketch, having so many areas of complete shading.

Of course, if you use more subtle shading, then you can make what looks to be a more accomplished sketch. This one underneath is not actually that well drawn – the front end of the boiler for example just isn’t quite right, but it still looks pretty good, I think, partly because of the amount of platform detail, and the contrast between the dark underside with the wheels, and the more lightly shaded boiler. 

Of course, if you’re feeling really confident and have time to really work at the sketch, then you can go to town on detail.

If you were to strip away the careful shading, what you’d be left with is still quite a complicated sketch, but nowhere near as complicated as it looks.

For me the attraction of sketching and painting steam engines is that they put a lot more of what they’ve got in the shop window than other types of train, or road vehicles. Look at even a rather simple tank engine and you’re still going to see pipes, domes, handles, and all other kinds of interesting bumps and protruberances.

Going back to my earlier point about viewpoint, you’ll notice that with each of these the viewer is looking up at the train, albeit to a slightly lesser extent than in the diesel train above. 

A few random points:-

·       When you’re sketching a car, bus, tram or train perspective and viewpoint are every bit as important as they are when you’re sketching buildings. If the viewer is looking up at a vehicle, this emphasises size and power, which can be enhanced by exaggerating the perspective more than normal.

·       You can always choose not to sketch in any background to the vehicle. However, if you just sketch in outlines of the background it can give the vehicle a context, while at the same time highlighting it.

·       Even really complicated vehicles, like steam locomotives, can be simplified through the use of areas of total shade, leaving you with a very simple set of outlines to sketch. Careful use of various gradations of shading can really give your sketch depth, body and definition.

Sketching Tips 7) Sketching foliage

Foliage

It’s been a while since I last gave a ‘lesson’ and so please let me start with a reminder of my usual caveat. I’m totally self taught, and all I can tell you is about my way of doing things. I’m not recommending it as the right way or the best way, just explaining that this is how I do it, in the hope that this might help. 

Now, most of the time foliage – by which I mean trees, bushes and grasses – is definitely not the ‘star’ of my sketch. I’m not deiberately dissing foliage here, but I’m a city boy originally, and what I find excites me is achitecture, machinery and people. So I tend to keep to limit the foliage to outlines with a few light shading marks. This usually provides a nice contrast with the actual object of the sketch. For example, in the sketch of a bridge in Aberavon below, the lightly sketched grass and the sky together frame the bridge, which is the real ‘star’ of the picture. A few vertical or almost vertical strokes do a good job of conveying the suggestion of grass to the eye.

In a similar way, in the sketch below which shows Pontrhydyfen Aqueduct, the darkness of the stone contrasts with the outlines of the forestry, which have not been shaded at all. To keep it light, I sketched in a few areas of shadow, but merely left them as outlines, which is a technique that I find can work particularly well when you’re trying to sketch in trees and bushes.

A couple more examples of me using this technique are these two sketches:-

The British Lion Pub Cwmavon. In this sketch I’ve even included outlines of some of the larger leaves, but again, none of the foliage is actually shaded, because the building is the focus, not the trees.

I like this sketch below, of Dyffryn Rhondda Post Office in the Afan Valley, because there is a contrast between the trees on the right, and the grassy hill side on the top left of the sketch.

Now, this minimalist technique for sketching foliage is fine when you are making a building, or something else the focal point of the sketch. However there may be times when you want to sketch the foliage itself in more detail.

This is a sketch of the disused Cynonville Railway Station. The track was ripped up decades ago, and the station now is on the route of a cycle path from Afan Argoed Country Park. Its leafy, overgrown appearance is very much the point of what I wanted to show about it.

As with the bridge picture, I’ve used vertical, or near vertical lines to show grass. However, as you can see I’ve applied far more shading to the bushes. If I was really focusing on the hut, then I’d just have only drawn the outlines of the shaded patches, and not all of them either for that matter. With this amount of shading you just can help but be struck by how overgrown the place is, and the hut itself seems to be merging into the foliage, which is very much the idea that I wanted to convey – that the trees and grasses are slowly reclaiming the land.  

Then there’s this sketch I made of my own back yard:-

If you look at it closely, you can see that it’s actually an inversion of the way that I usually depict foliage in a sketch. The buildings are lightly shaded, where shaded at all, while there’s heavy shading on the bush, and many of the individual leaves are sketched and even some of their marking details are sketched in. And the reason is that when I made the sketch, I felt that the bush was as much the ‘star’ of the picture as any other element.

A few random points

If foliage is not the most important element of the sketch:-

·       The more shading of the foliage that you do, the more you will draw attention towards the foliage and away from the main elements of the sketch, which isn’t what you want to do.

·       You can get good effects by simply sketching in the outlines of blocks of foliage, and also the outlines of areas of shading.

·       A few vertical, or near vertical lines sketched close together can give the appearance of grassy areas.

If foliage is one of the most important elements of the sketch:-

·       Sketch in areas of shading. As with many things, the more different gradations of shading you use to suggest lighter and darker areas, the more detailed your foliage will appear.

·       Heavy shading tends to make foliage appear denser, bushier and more overgrown if this is the effect that you want to achieve.

·       You can achieve some very appealing effects by using areas of dark shading around negative space in the shape of individual leaves, especially if the background to the tree or bush itself is lightly sketched in.

One Sketch #93 Forth Bridge

More than just a symbol
of a Sisyphean task
A thing of majesty,
Might and beauty
Cantilevered arms embrace
Across the Firth
And people move
Across the face of the waters.

You may recall earlier this year that I said that I have a thing about bridges. Well, this is one of the greatest - not just in Britain, but of the whole world. Having said that, it is a thing of Scotland - and being of Scottish ancestry myself I have to admit a certain swell of pride every time I look at it.

One Sketch #51) Waterloo Bridge

Where are the Samaritans?

Look around

They are beside you

In front of you

behind

Look in the mirror

And let one look back at you. 

On the way driving home from work yesterday, I had the radio on and was listening to Radio 2, as is my wont. A guest on Steve Wright's show was a very interesting chap called Jonny Benjamin. He was telling of how he was saved from carrying out his suicide attempt on Waterloo Bridge by a passing good samaritan, and of his subsequent internet search for the man who saved him, which forms the subject of a TV documentary he made, and a book he has just published. 

As a depressive myself, I found him, and his work campaigning to raise public awareness of issues regarding mental health, to be quite inspirational. 

Another biro sketch made in a snatched 10 minutes at lunchtime at work.