Crealde Panorama

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Each Sunday I head out to Crealde to do demos and try and inspire my students to sketch anywhere they go. We spent all of the classes so far exploring the campus. I keep stressing that everything is sketch worthy. We have covered drawing human proportions and this last class I did a demo on how to draw faces. Most of the time however is spent sketching.

I had the student break up a single sketch page into 9 panels and the goal became to fill each panel with a small sketch. Since students were still getting used to the supplies they worked slowly the first class. Some students only finished one panel other finished several. This week we returned to the same assignment to complete the page. At the end of this class one very talented student had finished every panel. She said, “This is the first complete sketch I have ever done.” It was rewarding to know I helped pushed her towards the concept of finished sketches that have line, value and color.

Another student pointed out that she had never filled a sketchbook. The problem is that many artists feel the book as a whole needs to be a masterpiece, and if it isn’t they put it aside and start another sketchbook. I always show my students my sketchbook that was lost when I rode my bike across the country. It was returned 30 years later when it was found in someones garage. Early sketches in the book are from when I was a freshman in college, then the book transitions into sketches form today. The transition is a jarring as the transition for black and white to color TV.

Since I am packing up my studio, I found all these scraps of matte board which are very horizontal in format. I demonstrated how to block in a panoramic composition in pencil, then pen and finally watercolor washes. I walked the sketch around to show each step, so students know how much time an effort goes into each step. All the while I let them keep working on their own sketches. They learn the most for making their own mistakes. I always offer suggestions, but also encourage then to accept the sketch as it is and apply my suggestions on the next sketch they do.

A gardener was carrying off huge trash cans full of refuge. It looked like real back breaking work. He loved to chat. He has been doing this type of work since he was 14. His father got him started and the money he made was put towards his first car. I later learned that he makes more than I do teaching at Crealde. Unfortunately I doubt I am strong enough to carry the same loads like Atlas. I can only put down lines and washes.

Sprout Halloween Nap

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The last drawing I did during a virtual online course with a student pulled everything together. Donkey got off of this seat and Sprout took her place. Thankfully he was facing me as he dozed off. He is rather small on the page which allows the setting to tell more of the story.

In the corner is an umbrella for a rainy day. Next to the umbrella is a six foot long stick which I used to bring to Crealde Classes to be sure students were spaced apart. COVID is airborne and can linger in the air for much further than six feet but at least I tried to keep my students safe.

What makes this sketch work is the contrast between the bright outdoors and the dark interior. It allows for more impressionistic colors and moody greys. Hopefully the student walked away with an understanding that a good sketch is more about the story than just getting the thing on the page.

Crealde Thumbnails

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My next Crealde Urban Sketching class was canceled since not enough students signed up.These thumbnails were done on the Crealde campus with an Urban Sketching students. He only had a pencil and paper to work with so I used just a pencil to block in the quick compositions. I enjoy doing these since there is no pressure to produce a refined and finished sketch. Looser is better.

Crealde Classroom Pandemic Sketch

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In my Crealde Urban Sketching course we tend to take one class to sketch fellow students as they work. I do quick 5 minute sketches to demonstrate how to position a figure on the page.  This particular sketch seems to be a sketch on top pf a sketch. I forget what I was demonstrating with the rough grid pattern. I was probably stressing how to avoid lining everything up on a grid and avoid horizontal and vertical lines.

Most classes are outside exploring the campus with our sketchbooks. I do this because it keeps my students safer during the pandemic. I was advised to offer an advanced urban sketching course but not enough students signed up so it was scrapped. No artist thinks of themselves as intermediate or advanced. Heck every one on my sketches is a series of mistakes.

The next series of Crealde Urban Sketching classes is starting up January 20, 2022. We meet on Sundays from 9:30am to 12:30pm.

Crealde Pandemic Student

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At Crealde School of Art once each series of classes I pose for students doing 5 minute gestures and then I have students pose in turn. With one student I will do a 5 minute demo to show how I approach getting the figure on the page with as much information as possible. Rather than just using a pencil, I use watercolor as well to get quick color shapes down on the page.

With more time I would work on top of this adding detail in ink and making the darks darker. My process is pretty simple, in each section of the sketch I want to have three values, the white of the page, then a medium value and a dark dark. In this sketch I only had time to throw a medium value over the darker areas of the figure.

Sometimes detail is left out due to time constraints but then you realize that the that detail isn’t always needed. The goal is to dance on the line between crazy rough and gloriously refined. So long as each sketch is not the worst I have ever done, I can keep moving forward.

My latest Urban Sketching Class for advanced students was canceled because not enough students wanted to sing up. Either students are social isolating or there isn’t much interest in sketching on location. I still wear a mask every time I sketch on location. The pandemic isn’t over and I have dodged the COVID bullet so far.

Crealde Classroom

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Most of my Crealde Urban Sketching classes have been held outside during the pandemic. Sometimes however the weather forces us indoors. For those classes I teach the students how to populate a sketch with multiple people in an indoor setting. The lesson starts at the blackboard where I explain how to relate one figure to another in a sketch.

I put away the desks for this class so we would have a wide open space to sketch. Many students have difficulty sketching people who are behind a desk. Like most of my sketches done on location I teach the students to think about drawing the room and then adding actors to that room.

As always, I do a sketch along with the students and show them my progress at the various sates of the sketch’s progression. I have a love affair with line and I try and convey that passion to the students. Watercolor washes are a fun afterthought to pull together all the elements that have been locked in place with line.

The next series of Sunday Crealde Urban Sketching classes starts after October 17, 2022.

Crealde Urban Sketching class

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My Crealde Urban Sketching class will be starting on October 23, 2022, just in time for the Halloween season. Each class begins with a premise that help build towards students completing a sketch in two hour time. We cover perspective, composition, placing people in the scene and much more. For some this is the first time using a sketchbook to document the world around them.

Crealde School of Art has now broken the course into two groups. The first intermediate group is a beginning series of classes that covers the basics needed to complete a sketch. All these classes take place on the Crealde campus, usually outside.

A new series of classes for more advanced students ha been introduced which will be for students who took the first course and want to take on more challenging subject matter. These classes will meet at various locations around Orlando. In these classes students will get used to the notion that people might look over their shoulder as they sketch.

Check out the Crealde web site if you are interested in joining us for Urban Sketching: Tips and Techniques.

Crealde Panorama 2

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On Sunday mornings I teach an Urban Sketching Class at Crealde School of Art. For this class I had students doing nine thumbnail sized sketcher per page. This sketch is essentially three thumbnails sketches stitched together to create a panorama. This was the second sketch of the series of sketches I did. Since the start of the pandemic I have become a bit forgetful about carrying my art supply bag with me everywhere I go. Before the pandemic I was sketching on location every day but now I might sketch on location once a week, spending most of my time working isolated in the studio. In this case I went to move a car in the driveway so I could drive my seldom used Prius to Crealde and I forgot my bag in the car that I had moved.

So for this series of sketches I found a single pencil and drew on the table cloth paper that is in a roll in the classroom. So the sketches might be thumbnails but the paper is probably twenty four inches across. I could not resist using those full twenty four inches to sketch on.

There were some really spectacular results in the thumbnails produced in this class. Each student draws in their own style, my goal is never to influence how they sketch of apply paint. Instead I offer suggestions on how to take in more of the scene in front of them. The challenge is to offer each student what they need to progress to the next level, so after a brief introduction of the day’s premise I then walk from student to student and offer one on one feedback usually in the form of a sketch.

At the beginning of this series of classes only one student wore a mask. Now three students wear a mask at least when inside. I always wear a mask since I never know when a student might approach with a question. I don’t mind being the odd man out, I always have been and I am well aware that this pandemic is far from over. Many people seem too choose ignorance and hope as a reaction to the pandemic. Hope is not a solution, simple measures like wearing a mask getting vaccinated and social distancing are.

Monochrome Thumbnails

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At my Sunday morning Crealde Urban Sketching class I often have the students to a page of monochrome thumbnails drawings. Most students get caught up in trying to mix just the right color when doing watercolors over thir sketch and this exercise helps them realize that how dark and light the washes are is of far greater importance.

This sketch was done back in 2020 when masks were still required at Crealde. I continue to wear my KN95 mask both indoors and outdoors when at Crealde. With this latest series of classes just one student also wore a mask. As BA5 cases rose this last week two more students chose to wear masks in class.

With summer fast approaching it is becoming harder to justify holding every class outside. I had one student outside who sat with no cover when the sun was behind a cloud. After 15 minutes she was in the blazing sunlight and barely able to see the brilliant white page she was working on. I encouraged her to seek cover and keep the people she had sketched and incorporate a different background. She pulled it off very successfully.

Most of my sketches done on location inn Orlando have been inside air conditioned venues, precisely because of the heat. Last weekend we sketched indoors and it was amazing to see how different everyone’s sketch was.

Crealde Thumbnails

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After several classes on perspective and composition, my Sunday morning Crealde School of Art Urban Sketching students are tasked each class in creating a page of thumbnail sketches that offer a visual tour of the campus. I often do a brief set of my own as I wander the campus and offer notes for each student. In this case I just worked in back and white to demonstrate how to cut up the image into a set of large simple dark and light shapes. In one sketch I was demonstrating that the sidewalk and grass can be very much the same light value since they are both illuminated by very bright sunlight.

The challenge of the exercise is to try and make it look like you are walking along the paths and the same objects might appear small and then larger as you approach them. Students also find that the much smaller sketches can be completed faster since large washes of watercolor are not needed to cover the sketch. Much smaller puddles of wash are easy to add with the pointy tipped water brushes many students have in their kit.

The other basic lesson is that a light object will show up best if there is something dark behind it and a dark object will appear best if there is something light behind it. These thumbnails basically use just 3 values, black, white and grey. That is all that is needed to get a sketch to jump off the page.