Toasy Studio

Posted on by Thor

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

Posted on by Thor

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

Posted on by Thor

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

Posted on by Thor

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

Posted on by Thor

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

Posted on by Thor

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

Posted on by Thor

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.

Swan Boats

Posted on by Thor

On Sunday I met an advanced Urban Sketching student at Lake Eola. Out mission was to sketch the swan boats.

Fencing has been added to this area making it impossible to sketch from nearby benches. Grass areas around the swan boats were also blocked of with yellow tape probably because new seed was added.

We settled on this view down a ramp to the water. I did this sketch as a demo to explain what I include in a sketch and why.

The first five minutes of a sketch are often the most important because the entire scene will be blocked in on the page and the rest is all about detail. I did the preliminary work in pencil and then let my student get to work as well.

The excitement of working on location is that different actors keep entering the scene while the sketch is in progress. At first a guy stood with his cell phone. Then a couple came by with a bag of seed and they fed the swans. Three Italian men held up a cell phone and spoke to relatives back home. I finally settled on this mother swan and her offspring. Dog owners kept walking by and the mother swan would lunge forward and hiss at the dogs. People are clueless. These swans have to be on the defensive every minute of their lives. Swan boats were loaded and returned in quick order as we sketched. Only one swan boat had a canopy, so I bet it got hot out there on the water.

A pug owner was walking his dog and the pup lay down next to my student and refused to move. She is a pug owner and he must have sniffed out his new friend. The pug leaned into all the pets and pretty much had to be dragged off to continue huffing along on his walk. We got to learn all about the owners history with pets. Sadly his last dog did not live long since it got cancer. These sorts of exchanges are what makes sketching on location such a pleasure.

Eola Slumber

Posted on by Thor

I went to Lake Eola in Orlando Florida to conduct an advanced Urban Sketching workshop with a student. As I was walking around the lake to meet her near the swam boats, would be the only one in the park wearing a face mask. I was wrong. I saw someone on a park bench fast asleep using a face mask to cover their eyes, to keep out the bright Florida sun. I didn’t have time to sketch this person, so I committed it to memory.

It seemed to me a perfect analogy to where we are as a country right now. Most Americans are “done” with the pandemic and have decided to put on blinders to go about life as normal in the midst of the pandemic. We are in a momentary lull. But lulls don’t last in a pandemic. It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

The White House may decide to back off on the COVID National Emergency status. The public health emergency (PHE) was initially declared by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in late January 2020, pursuant to Section 319 of the Public Health Service Act. A PHE lasts for 90 days and must be renewed to continue; the PHE for COVID-19 has been renewed several times, most recently in April 2022, and is currently scheduled to expire in mid-July 2022. Possibly allowing the PHE to expire isn’t being based on experts or any science but rather on the fact that there are mid term elections coming up and it would be impossible to get re-elected while the country was in the midst of a national emergency. The only solution is to put on the blinders.

Crealde Class

Posted on by Thor

On Sunday mornings from 9:30 to 12:30 I am teaching an Urban Sketching class at Crealde School of Art. Last week we focused on drawing people by sketching each other.

This demo sketch was done to show how to block in figures and make them feel well grounded to the chair they are sitting in. The basic premise is to draw the chair and then draw the person seated in the chair.

The sketches were just 5 minutes in duration and I was showing how watercolor can be used to also block in masses quickly,

I modeled to start taking several longer 10 minute poses to get the students started. Then each student posed for 5 minutes while we all sketched. It was raining, so we worked indoors.

I was quite proud that all my students kept their focus and got n impressive amount of work done in the time we had.

At this point I was suggesting that the students get one or two figures on the page but by the end of class we were again sketching the entire scene.