Tag Archives: sketch

Speed sketching

Recently for a few years I stopped carrying a sketchbook even after having done that all my life, at least since I was a schoolboy. But I’m back sketching now – and enjoying it.

sketches of faces in a shopping mall.
I was warming up at sketching and added notes to myself as I noticed my faults and sticking points. Lighten up on the pens strokes, people facing to the left are more difficult for me to draw. And I was gripping the sketch book like a drowning man.

People.

People is what I like to draw. I enjoy that more than drawing scenery or buildings.

Usually I draw in a cafe and focus on fellow customers seated at tables. But lately I’ve been sketching at tables in the open inside shopping mall courts.

sketches at supermarket tills.
These sketches allowed slightly more time for me to draw as the people were at self service tills. I still only had seconds but at least they were not traveling past at speed.

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Dog-walk Sketching: practise and spares.

It’s my habit when sketching on the dog walk to always carry a spare pen. Just like you carry a spare wheel in the car when driving or a puncture outfit when cycling. Because if you do only have one pen – it does this.

A leaking biro pen.
The thick black ink managed to creep out of the pen everywhere except at the ball point.

Don’t get annoyed.

I’d found a spot and had brought out my sketch book and BIC biro and had begun to draw. Then the pen stopped. Only then did I notice my black sticky fingers and the Ink leaking from the pen everywhere except where it’s supposed to. I was left in a frustrated mess with an aborted birth of a sketch and nothing to fix it with.

Incomplete sketch of a tess showing a trunk and mossy base.
I started drawing the tree at its mossy base and this was as far as I got.

Continue reading Dog-walk Sketching: practise and spares.

When you stop drawing.

Doodled-ideas-inspired-at-meetings.
Doodles from way back the nineties when I was a laid back chilled hipster designer – even in the face of imminent high profile immovable deadlines.

I have a drawing habit. I’ve always doodled prolifically – on napkins, backs of envelopes, margins of agendas, reports, coffee lids, whatever.  In discussions and meetings, whether in boardrooms or cafés, no one has ever objected. When the drawing stopped it was a shock. That was when I realised I was seriously ill.

Doodles done on agendas and notepads.
My doodles from late back in the first decade of the new millennium. I’m now working as a visual communications lecturer in the education sector – and still cheery although there are warning signs of frustration such as the legs taking the chopped torso for a walk.

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