Crealde casual

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This is another casual sketch to demonstrate that the figure does not need to fill the page when doing a sketch on location. I will usually one of these for each student to show how I might approach the scene they are sketching. I seldom push these to a finish. The main thing I stress is how to block in a scene quickly without getting caught up in minor details to start.

I am also pointing out how to set the stage. You can see a faint hint of the space under the tent and that mirrors the shape of the top of the table. The student is maskless So I make sure to sketch from a distance outdoors.

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 Demo

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Once with each class at Crealde I do a quick demo to show the stages of progress for a typical sketch. Behind the classroom is this tranquil view across the lake. I didn’t spend as much time as I usually do on the inking of the line work. I opted to keep much of the distant far shore line work in pencil and I just inked the chairs ad the sculpture. Part of the lesson was to encourage students to leave the white of the paper showing in multiple places.

The grass wasn’t just painted green. instead I painted it yellow where the sunlight hit, then green then yellow ocher and then blue where shadows hit. My goal is to get students to get away from a puzzle piece approach to covering the ppage with color. Instead I try to get them to only use three of four very large washed to cover most of the page and then to break up those large wash areas into smaller light and dark areas.

If the darks are taking too long to put down then I just start frantically scribbling in darks with colored pencils. The main point is to get the students to see my chaotic and frantic approach. There is never quite enough time to finish a sketch to a high degree of polish so I paint like a madman and then slow down if the subject lingers.

COVID Class

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This sketch from January of 2021 shows one of my Urban Sketching classes held at Crealde. At the time the case counts were the highest they had ever been during the course of the ongoing pandemic, with over 800,000 new cases a day in the United States. At that time over 2,500 people were dying from COVID every day in the United States.

I kept my classes outside for student safety but maintaining social distancing was a challenge. Students don’t go to in person classes to social distance, they go because they want a break from social isolation. I maintained my own social distance by carrying a 6 foot long stick. More often than not I maintained a 22 foot distance since I am well aware that an airborne virus does not limit itself to a six foot radius. It billows in the wind.

Each student still got one on one attention since I would share my ideas with quick sketches to demonstrate perspective and composition. Those sketches remained in my sketchbook, but I did them bold enough to be seen from any distance.

Today deaths have remained steady at about 400 to 500 deaths a day from COVID-19 in America since about April of 2022. People however are “over” the pandemic. 500 deaths a day seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the 2500 deaths a day we faced in January of 2021. People will do anything rationalize crowding together and wishing away the pandemic. This fall and winter the numbers will again rise thanks to new immune evasive variants and the fact that masks and social distancing seem to be a thing of the past. I continue to take every precaution. I like being the only person in the room wearing a mask.

Crealde Thumbnails

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At my Crealde Urban Sketching course I always have the students do a series of thumbnail sketches so they can explore compositional possibilities before committing to a full page sketch. I do fast and car free sketches along with them to show them each stage of my process.

This was also a lesson in perspective. Anything man made is usually square and knowing where a vanishing point is helps to find the right angles in a cue shapes object. You can see I even drew lines in the grass hinting at where the vanishing point is across the lake.

In the fall the temperatures are just right for sketching outdoors. Fall classes start October 23, 2022.

 

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.

5 Minute Demo

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With my Crealde students, one class is devoted to just doing five minute sketches of everyone in the class. This is s demo done on the back patio, to show how much can be blocked in on a page in 5 minutes. I am training them to think of the figure as just  fraction of what goes on the page. Most beginning students don’t get much more that the head on the page in 5 minutes, so I give my students all the short cuts I use to get human proportions down fast.

I am also demonstrating how to use every tool in the toolbox to get things don fast. Sometimes a fast watercolor wash will block inn an area faster that a series of lines. This sketch also shows the strange transitional period of the pandemic. Masking requirements were lifted, but I was happy that one of my students remained masked at all times.

For the past 3 months more people have died from COVID-19 in Florida than in any other state. Hospitalizations are going down now so this peak has passed but I still believe in taking every precaution until the pandemic is over. Over 80,000 Floridians have died, many of them needlessly. Over 400 Americans are dying every day due to COVID-19  and that ha become the new norm.

Crealde Panorama 1

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After five days of COVID-19 quarantine, I was cleared to go back to teaching classes in person at Crealde. I tested negative for the virus and returned to the campus several days later. It was a nice morning so we sketched outside. I managed to completely forget my art supply bag, so instead I found a pencil in the summer camp supplies and sketched on a bit of table top paper. I didn’t have watercolors so I was only able to do line art.

The point of this class was to have students do a series of nine small thumbnail drawings to fill  page. With the layout I suggested three thumbnail drawings would line up across three stacked lines. I decided to simply stitch three thumbnails together to create panoramas. I scanned the drawings back at my home studio and then finished them off as digital paintings.

My first piece of advice is always to stay in the shade since the Florida Sun can be brutal. Most of the students stayed on the back patio area which is covered. As the sketches progressed it gradually grew hotter. There are ceiling fans in the rafters of the back patio but I couldn’t figure out where the switch was. Several texts to colleagues finally uncovered the secret, the switch was in the art studio next to my classroom. The fans made a huge difference.

Some students however ventured out to other parts of the campus and one misjudged how much shade she had. I  think she ended up in the direct sunlight and she returned to the classroom to finish her sketches in the air conditioning.

One student hunted down all the female nude sculptures around the property. I had never realized just how many nudes there were. As an urban sketcher it is very seldom that I will be sketching a nude. People tend to wear clothes at events in public. Yet the nude seems to be the predominant subject among the sculptures on property.

All of my students are women in this session at Crealde. That leaves me wondering why men don’t seem to have an interest in sketching. It is a real mystery.

Crealde 2 Point

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At my Crealde Urban Sketching class I worked hard to socially distance my students when we worked in the classroom. I would carry a six foot long staff with me to class to be sure students were more than six feet apart. I would leave the classroom door open to get some cross breeze and I organized the table into a large square positioning each student at a corner.

Masks were required at Crealde at the time but that mandate has been dropped. Thankfully I haven’t been back in the classroom since the masking has been dropped.

This sketch was done as a demo after I introduced students to the idea of using two point perspective in a sketch. They were tasked with including as many other students as they could in their sketch.

As I worked on my sketch I walked around at each phase to show the students how much work was involved with the pencil rough, the inking and the final watercolor. I also offered each student individualized sketch suggestions to incorporate into their sketch.

Most of our work was done outside, but for one class I wanted to convey how to sketch people and place them inside a room.  Much of the challenge comes in getting students to understand how to use horizontal, vertical, parallel and diagonal lines. I am convinced that basic geometry should be a requirement for any student of art. I work my students hard but those who are up to the task start producing some amazing work.

Crealde COVID Classroom

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At my Crealde Urban Sketching Class I usually have one lesson inside while the other 5 lessons are outside.The goal of the one indoor class is to teach the students how to draw the classroom using one point or two point perspective. My sketch is done in two point perspective.

Before class I remove most of the tables and leave just one table for each student. My goal is to remove any chance of students sitting too close together. In the foreground of my sketch is the 6 foot long staff I bring to every class. I literally carry it around like Moses as a visual reminder that I need to keep 6 feet from students. Each table is 6 feet wide so that is another visual reminder. I sat more than six feet away by the open classroom door.

Next to the six foot staff is a rolled up drawing on brown paper that is a three dimensional map of the room with an orthographic view from above and orthographic views of the walls. When taped into a cube shape it is a decent representation of the room. The basic lesson is that an artist maps out his view of everyday places and events.

The next series of six Urban Sketching classes starts January 30, 2022.