Crealde Urban Sketching Tent

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One of the first assignments my Urban Sketching students get at Crealde School of Art is trying to sketch this outdoor tent. The day starts with a lesson in 1 point and two point perspective and then we go outside and sketch the tent.

There is a lake behind Crealde and the far shore gives a clear indication of where the horizon line would be in a sketch. Before students get too far into their sketches, I visit each one individually and give them a thumbnail sketch to indicate what features I would look for if I were to attempt the sketch from their angle.

Sometimes we just work in pen and ink and sometimes we push further and use watercolor. It depends on the vibe of the students. Each class tends to focus on one premise which is rolled into what we learned the previous week.

This is the perfect time of year to attend the Urban Sketching Class since the weather is so cool. In most classes we are outside exploring the camp us or heading out to a location to sketch. Past locations have included, a dog park, bowling alley, Panera’s, and antique car meet ups. The possibilities on a Sunday morning could be endless with enough research.

If you are interested in improving your skills and joining an international movement of like minded artists you should come on out. We meet for 3 hours and the goal is always to push the sketches to a level of completion with line, value and color. These are sketches not something for a museum wall. When you stop worrying about the final result you tend to take more chances and surprisingly the sloppy experiments are what works best. In my work the sketches are almost always populated with people, so in one class students sketch one another.

I just got an email from Crealde and unfortunately the January 19 series of classes have been canceled but you should think about signing up of the next series of sessions starting in the spring. I can’t figure out why sketching on location is not more popular in Orlando. I have been sketching everyday on location since 2009. I just did the math, that is 16 years. It is a habit that keeps me motivated and inspired each and every day.

Today I will be unpacking all the sketchbooks I have filled over the past 16 years. They take up a shelf and a half on my handmade bookcase. I also discovered I have tons of wood stretchers and raw canvas. It might be a good time to start working on larger paintings on location. I am now in a rural area town in Florida names Yalaha, so I will soon be hiking into the woods to sketch and perhaps work on larger paintings. This is an exciting time, much like a residency. This new location should inspire me to take more chances moving forward while still working on the COVID Dystopia book.

 

Urban Sketching Classes Canceled

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In the Crealde School of Art Summer Urban Sketching classes we cover composition, perspective, drawing the figure, and watercolor. We start with a lesson plan where I discuss the day’s topic and do sketches on a chalk board. I tend to explain better with line rather than words.

Then students spend much of the class sketching. I sketch along with them and share each step of my process so they get a feel for how long each step takes.

I also do pencil thumbnail sketches for each student explaining what could be adjusted inn the sketch they are doing to help improve it.

At the end of class we all put down the favorite sketch and then they get to learn from each other, discussing what works best.

Unfortunately not enough students signed up, so the next series of classes were canceled.

Crealde Thumbnails

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I am thinking that I should hold off on posting scenes from COVID Dystopia until the weeks leading up to the next film festival. That means I should share more sketches done on location.

These are thumbnail sketches I did with my Urban Sketching students at Crealde. I find that many students start out with very tiny water brushes which makes covering a 9 by 12 sheet of paper an arduous task.

With this assignment we break up  the page into nine separate panels and then explore the Crealde campus. I then do a quick demo having them watch as I complete a single thumbnail sketch. I explain composition and keeping the sketch loose and simple. I then ask then to hunt down statues as center of interest in each of their sketches.

As they are working, I then do another thumbnail and walk around to check on their progress. At first I show them each individual stage of the sketch and then I start finishing each thumbnail before I walk around. My most impotent lesson is being sure you are in the shade for the duration of each sketch. In Florida that lesson is critical. I teach then to pay attention to the movement of shadows to be sure the shade doesn’t disappear as the sun moves. I have has students ignore that lesson and get caught in the blazing sun. I then swoop in to encourage them to take cover as they apply color.

There was a gorgeous wedge of ferns near the bridge at Crealde. Since renovations were done that wedge has been pulled up. I have been planting ferns in the back year of the Chatsworth Studio. I wish I had such a thick lush planting. In tile they will expand and fill in.

Toasy Studio

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One assignment I have with my virtual Urban Sketching students is to sketch the studio they happen to be working from.I always sketch and paint along with them and explain in this case, one point perspective and how to block in a scene. In this case the foreground has all warm colors while the mid–ground is more neutral and greyed down. I emphasized how things in the foreground will have fewer horizontal lines while object further away might be home horizontal.

You can see how disorganized I am with rags and folders stored in egg carts. Larger sketches are rolled up on the table and stacks of sketchbooks wait to be filled with sketches. Entry to the studio is blocked with a short stack of plastic containers. That is so the dog doesn’t come in and make even more of a mess. When the dogs have to go outside, they sit at the entrance to the studio and stare at me until I stop painting and let them outside. They are a bit spoiled since they can go out at any time since I am always painting.

Another goal of the painting was to make sure anything outside the windows was painted lighter than anything inside. If I had more time I would erase lines and focus on hard and soft edges of objects.

On July 1, 2022 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers that updated booster shots for the fall season will need to have added protections against the latest omicron sub-variants. By this time people were becoming keenly aware that breakthrough infections would shift from a statistical anomaly to a regular occurrence.

Crealde 5 minute pandemic sketches

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At Crealde School of Art for one of my Urban Sketching Classes I pose for the students and then students pose in turn for 5 minutes each. My quick sketches serve as demo to show how to get the figure on the page and start to think about the environment around the student pose. In this sketch one figure is isolated and the second sketch I added a student sketching in the foreground and a background with a hint of a table and windows. This is a rare case where I didn’t throw some watercolors washes on the sketch. I also never touched a pen and only worked in pencil which is how many beginning students work since they fear they may have to erase mistakes. In the short duration of 5 minutes there is never time to erase.

Crealde Student

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In one session of each series of Crealde Urban Sketching classes I pose for students and then have each student in turn pose of 5 minutes. I give a brief lecture on human proportions and how to fit the figure on the page by noting where the head and feet will be planted before starting the sketch.

I also point out that everyone has more tools at their disposal like watercolor and which can be used to throw quick masses o the page. I do a demo showing my process as I sketch one student. My hope is to convey a frenetic approach where the process is part sketching and part juggling the many tools.

After we do a series of sketches of students isolated on the page like this one, we then start ingratiating the figure onto an environment. I often have the students do a sketch on the Crealde campus and then ask them to incorporate their favorite sketches that they did of fellow students so that it seem like the student was sketched while relaxing on the campus. This then also becomes a lesson in sketching multiple figures on the same page and having them work together in perspective.

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.

Knowles Chapel 2

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I let my advanced Urban Sketching student decide what angle to sketch Knowles Chapel from. We sat under a line of trees which guaranteed shade. My first lesson, is always, “Never sketch while sitting in the sun in Florida.” It is kind of the most important rule of sketching in Florida, but you would be amazed at how many artists don’t predict the movement of shadows and get stuck sweating in the sun.

From this angle the rose garden in front of the church became a center of interest. The chapel tower is now a reduced feature in the background. In the courtyard behind all those arches is a statue of Mr. Rogers surrounded by children. If he wasn’t such a beloved entertainer, it might seem a bit creepy.

The vanishing point in this sketch is at the far left between several arches. The roof and the walls of the garden point to that spot. My fountain pen ran out of ink, so all the line work in this sketch was dome with a brown colored pencil. I kind of like the look it is a bit more subtle than my usual sketch. My advanced student had to recover from the hurricane this weekend, so we aren’t going on location. I have tons of large branches down as well. I managed to clear the driveway of debris before I had to come in to teach a virtual class. My hurricane recovery plan is in small incremental stages.

We did quite a bit of clean up before the storm but the city refused to pick up the pile of debris on the day before the storm. They want everything tucked neatly into small plastic lawn bags. They must have an agreement with a plastics company. Anyway all of today’s debris went into lawn bags which is insanely time consuming. I am thinking a bon fore would be far more fun to do over night.

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.

Smokey Jay’s BBQ

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I have an advanced Urban Sketching student I am working with and we meet each week at Lake Eola. Last week we sketched the farmers market where everyone sits under the huge live oak tree.

We discovered that the Lake Eola Farmer’s Market closes down about 2:30pm and we were still in the midst of the sketch as tents were taken down and vendors packed up.

Despite this, we decided to once again sketch the street vendors dishing out plenty of BBQ to the mask less crowds.

While we were sketching this week it started to rain just as I was starting to put watercolor washes over the sketch. Last week it also threatened to sketch and we bolted with the crowds as soon as the winds picked up.

This week, we held our ground. I packed away my sketch in my art bag and decided to wait until the rain stopped. The weather radar on my phone made it seem like the storm would be very short lived. As the rain became torrential, people crowded under window and porch awnings. The pine trees we were under were actually pretty good cover so we moved closer to the trunk and waited. The rain eventually did let up a bit and I painted a huge puddle of blue in the foreground before the rain became worse and forced me to once again close the sketch book.

Since we were already soaked through to the bone, it made no sense to seek cover. It was actually quite refreshing getting soaked. As we continued to debate if it might be possible to complete the sketch, the vendors started packing up. Where we were seated was where the vendors would stack up their dismantled tents so that settled it, we would have to move on. The assignment then became to complete the sketch and make it seem like a torrential summer shower had not thrown a wrench into the creative process. If this sketch looks like a royal mess, that is because it is a royal mess.