Superman’s European Dressing Room
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Category Archives: Urban Sketching
Dilapidated Farm
A 1-minute pencil study for a barn that will be going into a larger finished work.
Wisconsin Farm
A 15-minute sketch from my trip to Twin Lakes, Wisconsin.
Tombstone Angel
I found this on top of a gravestone in some tiny graveyard in the middle of nowhere. The light was hitting it in an interesting way, so I sketched.
Main Street Laundry
Actually, this is the building next to the Main Street Laundry in a little town called Twin Lakes, Wisconsin.
I sat on the sidewalk and drew this building while, apparently, half the town sat inside the diner across the street and watched me. Eventually somebody came out and yelled, “What you drawing?” I answered him, and he replied, “Mavis thought you were doing homework. I said that a strange place to be doin’ homework!”
Funny how people have no compunction about asking what you’re doing if they think you’re drawing. If I had been fixing a lawn mower or balancing books on my head, I’ll bet nobody would have said a word to me.
Lincoln Park Conservatory
This building near the Lincoln Park Zoo is comprised of a bunch of greenhouses and is one of the more interesting looking buildings in the area. My perspective is all screwed up on this. Also, I should not have tried to capture such a detailed subject with charcoal in such a small format as my sketchbook.
I’m going to have to give this one another go sometime soon. Unless the weather doesn’t hold out; in which case, I’ll have to wait til spring.
Summer Evening Near Fullerton Beach
The summer in Chicago has been unusually cool this year. But that doesn’t stop people from taking full advantage of the beaches. This park overlooks the beach at Fullerton Avenue and the buildings downtown can be seen a couple miles south.
There are a few things that scare me (from an artistic perspective). Water and people are at the top of that list, so I had to work hard to stifle the voices in my head saying, “what are you doing? You can’t paint that!” The water didn’t work out as well as I had envisioned; but given that I was going for something of stylized painting and not realism, I’m really happy with the group of picnickers on the grass.
The Landmark Cafe at Lincoln Park Zoo
People who dine at this building in the Lincoln Park Zoo have a nice view of the lion habitat. The lions have an equally nice view of the people. I wonder who enjoys watching whom more?
This building caught my eye a few weeks ago, and I’ve been waiting for the perfect day to go back and paint it. Today was that day.
I arrived before the cafe opened, and sketched out the contours. I layed down the first set of washes, and then wouldn’t you know… someone came out and opened all the umbrellas. I decided to leave them closed in this painting and just rely on memory for the color and shadow.
One thing I learned from this painting is that I need to get faster. It took me an hour and a half to get the painting to its current state. And, while I’m relatively happy with the end result, it still looks to me like a rather quick sketch.
I’m still having trouble getting really dark darks. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the medium or if I’m just doing something wrong. Given some of the better watercolor paintings I’ve seen, I am inclined to believe the problem is me.
Another thing I learned today is that people will leave you alone at the zoo. Everywhere else that I’ve drawn in public, people had no qualms about walking right up to me and looking over my shoulder to see what I was doing. Today, people walked by as if I weren’t there. That almost more unsettling than the other way ’round.
This is the first traditional watercolor I’ve done in a while. I’m not sure which I prefer doing: traditional, or ink and wash. I suppose I’ll have to continue working on both until one emerges as a preference. The ink and wash sketches are certainly faster to finish; but that may just be a matter of practice.
Note: The scanner washed the colors out slightly. Bad, scanner.
Compositionally Challenged
Not everything goes according to plan. If I ever forget this, all I have to do is sketch something.
My plan for this sketch (another view from the back of our condo) was to make the telephone pole the center of attention. I thought framing it with the flowers and planters we have on our deck would help with that. Unfortunately, I think the foreground objects have taken over instead of retreating to the background.
I think the single biggest mistake I made in this regard is that I made the plants too colorful, and added too much contrast. I think if I had made them more sillhouetted, that would done the trick nicely.
Or, I could have cheated, and just done a strategic crop. But what would that have proven?
I’m also not happy with the how flat the background buildings came out. I wanted to push them to the background, so I knew I had to leave details out and avoid putting too much emphasis on their color and structure. Unfortunately, I think I went too far the other way.
Oh well, they can’t all be winners. Plus, I learned something as a result. And hopefully, I won’t have to make the same mistake a hundred times before I finally learn how to deal with it.
Reading Between the Lions
The Art Institute of Chicago has these giant bronze lions on either side of the steps leading to the main entrance. People sit on the steps and read between the lions when the weather is nice. As for me… I stand across the street and draw them. And of course, the woman on the steps was talking on her cell phone instead of reading, thus messing up my very clever title. Maybe I should have gone with a telephone-related title like ‘Hold the Lion’ or ‘The Lion is Busy’?
This lion is the one on the north side of the entrance. His unofficial name (given to him by the sculptor) is ‘On the Prowl’. When one of our home teams is in the playoffs, the lions are dressed in team jerseys. They even have super-size helmets for the lions for football season. Since it isn’t playoff season, the lions are naked.
I did the line drawing during lunch this afternoon and painted it when I got home this evening. There was just barely enough time to eat, walk over there, draw, and walk back. But the weather was really nice today, so I felt like I had to take advantage of it. People hovered around and looked over my shoulder. I could hear them whisper to each other, “Ooh, he’s drawing the lion!” It was, simultaneously, nerve-wracking and exhilarating.
This was real challenge for me for a few reasons: 1. I am intimidated by drawing living things, even if (as in this case) that living thing is not really a living thing; 2. Mostly related to number 1, I actually included a human being in this sketch; and 3. I had to paint from memory so I was left to my own devices with respect to color and shadow. The lion’s looking a little chubby, but overall, I’m happy with how this came out.
Urban Gardening
Today was a nice day to sit on the deck and sketch. In fact, it was a perfect day to stretch my ‘urban sketching’ muscles.
The Bleachers at Wrigley Field
I spent the day roasting myself at the Cubs game. I can hardly think of a better way to spend an afternoon, especially when the Cubbies get a win.
The scoreboard at Wrigley is an icon of tradition… one of the last manually operated scoreboards in the Major Leagues. You won’t find any Jumbotron in Wrigley Field, no sir! This is baseball, as pure as it can be — at least as pure as it can be when you’re fielding a team full of multimillionaires.
That part of the field, by the way, is where Milton Bradley dropped an easy fly ball. Whoa boy… Chicago fans can be merciless when a highly-paid, highly-touted, professional athlete does something so inept! Just ask Rex Grossman; I’m sure he can tell you a thing or two.
By the way, anyone got any good tips for laying down a clean watercolor wash on smooth paper?
Burwood Tap
This is a friendly little tavern on the corner near my home. I stopped to sketch it on my way home from work this evening, because the weather was simply beautiful and my back was not bothering me too much.
I’ve got a few perspective problems with this that I’ll have to watch out for in the future.
I love the shape of this building for some reason. Maybe it’s the knocked-off corner; maybe it’s the awning… whatever it is, I just love looking at it, and I hope I can one day truly capture just how inviting I think it is.
St. Clement Church
Charcoal continues to kick my butt.
There are thousands of beautiful old buildings in Chicago, and I want to be able to draw them. The weather is finally turning nice, so I should start to see more opportunities to do just that. I am really enjoying my charcoal adventure. But I am really struggling to get a good handle on it. The evidence is in the massive inconsistency between the bell tower and the main facade of the church. Though, to be totally fair to myself, I did stop before I felt like I was finished due to time constraints; and I did focus a little more on the bell tower.
I spent an hour sitting on the sidewalk across from this church which is two blocks from my condo. I had several false starts until I finally set my mind to finish a sketch no matter how badly it starts.
Anyway, I am starting to learn some things about myself that I thought I would share:
- I tend to let the looseness of a really soft charcoal dictate a very loose drawing style. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
- I tend to focus on the negative space and the shadows much more than the object itself when I am working with charcoal. The result is a much more impressionistic approach than when I am sketching with pencil.
- Once I have an implement in-hand, I tend to use it until I am forced to switch — especially when drawing away from my normal space, where I can spread out all my pencils, erasers, and such.
- I don’t erase. This is true when I am using a pencil too. When I first picked up my pencils back in October, I made a conscious decision to not use an eraser — it was an exercise in discipline, to force myself to learn to make the right line the first time. But now that I have switched to charcoal, I think I might benefit from using an eraser at least as a shading tool.
- My sketchbook is not necessarily receptive to the combination of charcoal and fixative. The charcoal separates in spots, which might be related to my habit of blending with my fingers.
Of all these things, point number 2 is the most interesting to me. I really do think differently with a piece of charcoal in my hand. I wonder why that is.
Drawbridge Control Tower Over the Chicago River
Chicago has more drawbridges than any other city in the country (if you believe the guy who does the PBS specials). This is a control tower for one of those drawbridges near the Sears Tower (soon to be renamed the Willis Tower, but I’ll be surprised when people around here start referring to it as such).
I drew this during the last 15 minutes of my lunch hour; we are finally starting to get some nice temperatures here. Given the short amount of time spent, I was obviously not going for a great amount of detail — I just wanted to capture the shadows. My proportions are off a little — the tower is actually a little more squat than I have captured here. But I am still glad to be able to get outside to draw.
Jefferson Memorial At Night
In keeping with the theme of the day, which apparently is “Washington DC Architecture”, I have sketched the Jefferson Memorial.
This is a tough one, because a significant portion of the light comes from inside the building. I opted for the pen and ink + watercolor approach on this one, and I sort of wish I had left the pen and ink out of it. Oh well, live and learn.
US Capitol Dome
Sunday morning in the U.S. means political talk shows on every major network. And every one of them, it seems, is set against a backdrop of the U.S. Capitol Dome.
I’m thinking that March will be a good month to really work on learning to use watercolors. This painting was done using 2 colors (Winsor Blue and Yellow Ochre) from my Cotman travel set (my thanks to Kate Johnson and Phyllis who commented on my last post that I should use less water). I purposely left the colors largely unmixed just see what the effect would be.
I really admire the work done by the contributors over at Urban Sketchers, and I look forward to warmer weather so I can get outside to sketch some architecture. In the meantime, I have plenty of work to do.
Lunch with a Red-head
For the second time in just over a week, having my sketchbook with me at lunchtime paid off. If I had left it at home, I doubt very much that I would have seeked out paper and pencil. But, since I had the stuff with me and a few extra minutes at my disposal, it worked out.
I’ve mentioned my aversion to lettering in the past. And as I started to draw this, my first thoughts were, “how can I fake the sign?” And then I almost immediately forgot all about that, and the next thing I knew, I had the whole thing sketched out; and not too badly if I do say so.
In fact, the signage and the roof are my favorite parts of this sketch. They aren’t perfect, but for what this is–a small post-lunch sketch–I’m quite happy with them. If I had to guess why, I would point to 3 things:
- Practice: I’ve been drawing more days than not for the past 10 weeks (Wow! When was the last time I was able to say THAT?!).
- Confidence: With all that practice comes a certain level of trust that I can make a decent line when I need to.
- I don’t know if I can put this into a word or two, but: A willingness to bind and gag my inner critic until the work is done. Sometimes you just have to convince yourself to shut up and draw. The more I do it, the easier it is to beat my inner critic into submission.
One thing I think I’m starting to convince myself of is that no matter how difficult the subject matter, it’s all just shapes and areas of shade/color. Some are a little more complex than others, but that just means you have to spend a little more time looking at them.
Interesting. This was not my best work; but I feel like it pointed out a lot of really important things. Oh American fast food… is there no problem you can’t solve? I mean, besides obesity.
Shadows
Despite the cold, today was sunny. The dentist on the corner has a nice green awning that catches the shadow of the traffic light when the sun hits it just right.
There are parts of this that I am really happy with, and parts that I’d rather forget. All part of the learning experience, I suppose.
In particular, I wish I’d left the building (brick, awning, etc.) a whole lot more pale to give some additional contrast to the light pole and shadow. I was impatient, though (this is getting be a theme), and was trying to shortcut the process by guessing how dark it would come out on the first pass instead of working in layers. And the more I worked the painting, the less straight my lines got. I know better; that’s what really bugs me.
Idyllic Christmas
Every once in a while, I sketch something that I’m really happy with. This is one of them. I think I really captured the silence of the moment.
The Corner Pub
I love street scenes. But it’s cold, so I don’t expect to do much of this until spring. I was on my way to do a little Christmas shopping. A foot of snow had fallen during the day, and I just couldn’t resist snapping a pic of the scene so I could draw it when I got home. This is a thumbnail sketch using a Pilot G2 gel pen.