Trying to Find a Method do Sketching That I am Happy With…
I really want to find a sketching style that feels intuitive, spontaneous and reasonable quick to do. I have always envied people that can bang off a piece of work over a short period. I’d love to eventually be able to ‘urban sketch’ on the spot to create a snapshot of things I like the look of in the form of a sketching journal.
But this means me doing something that I have never been good at - working quickly! 😕
I have never been all that confident in creating my work, and I also tend to prevaricate (again, a nasty habit which comes down to my lack of self-assurance). This is why it takes me soooooo long to complete projects, I kinda have an actual fear of finishing anything!
Anyway, one of the goals of this new attempt at getting into sketching is to find a technique using [digital] ink pens and watercolours that suits themselves to making quick impressions of a subject that can caught on the fly. (Note: I say impressions and not ‘impressionistic’ which is a totally different thing.).
Bishard, Bash, Bosh… Done!
To cut a long story short (which I never seem to manage) I came across an online/video tutorial collection by a Yorkshire watercolour artist called Doug Jackson. He does a sort of watercolour technique that is similar to the marker technique of Albert Kiefer, whose lessons of ‘expressive architectural sketching’ I followed with some success a while ago.
So, what is ‘expressive’ sketching?
Expressive sketching focuses on conveying the artist's emotions and personal response to a subject, rather than creating a precise, realistic representation. It emphasizes the feeling and essence of the subject, often utilizing loose, gestural marks and bold lines. This approach allows artists to tap into their creativity and bring their unique perspective to the artwork.
When I was able to field a traditional pen and marker with a decent enough amount of confidence and dexterity - despite my wobbly hand - this is the sort of colour painting (with markers) that I was producing…
Unfortunately, because of my issues - while this work was possible - it took me very long periods to produce, ran the risk of being spoilt by unrecoverable mistakes (due to my crazy hand) and - in the end - just didn’t not feel intuitive or spontaneous enough. And I certainly could never do this in situ or on the fly.
So, back to the drawing board. But, Doug Jackson’s lessons piqued my interest and combined with the new acquisition of an Apple iPad 13 inch Pro I felt that I should give watercolours a bash. (I had tried drawing on my old 10 inch iPad before, but found it just a little constraining.)
…And here I am. Trying out watercolour sketching. I did start colouring in my first attempts sort of how I would tackle a project using marker pens, blocking out areas of colour in fairly opaque sections…
While this produces some quite nice works, I wasn’t really all that invested in them and they kinda felt like filling in a colouring book (the most creative and fun part was the initial ink drawing). So, I looked further into Doug Jackson’s style and lessons and started to lean towards his looser style of doing things…
Eventually, and most recently, Doug released his ‘10 minute sketching’ video and this really excited me…
I say excited me, but it also scared me as well! This sort of intuitive and quick drawing style was completely at odds with my meticulous and rigid graphic style. But what scared me the most was the idea of drawing so loosely BUT still incorporating any ‘mistakes’ that were made as part of the process. 😯
I went as far as joining Doug’s Patreon community and mentioned my worry about drawing freely - incorporating ‘mistakes’ - and that my instinct would be to eraser errors (undo on the iPad) or completely trash a piece if it went too far ‘wrong’.
But Doug replied and explained to me the in ‘expressive’ sketching there are kinda no such things as ‘mistakes’ - it’s all part of the intuitive and expressive process. Wayward or wobbly line, blotches and being a bit creative about what you put in or leave out all add to a personal rendition of a moment in time that you want to capture. Well, that’s what I understand about this process anyway.
So far I am in a transitional stage between my old rigid style of drawing (and do still worry about mistakes and formal composition and the bad habits that I have picked up) and starting to integrate some of the more free flowing techniques of expressive sketching.
Above: The eventual idea of ‘expressive’ sketchbook sketching would be to draw without any preparatory draught outline drawing. But I’m definitely not up to that intuitive sketching yet! Here’s an outline I did - on it’s own layer of my iPad drawing software - and which I do my ‘inking’ over…
Above: One of the handy things about sketching digitally is that you can create ‘layers’ on which you can try out variations of your original piece. Here I created a layer onto which I applied a monochrome shading wash. I can them turn this layer off to try a different variation. This layer can also used as a underlying or overlying shaded layer to a colour version, made transparent in degrees to make the shading lighter or darker.
Above: The final stage of my earl attempts at watercolour painting was to apply the colour elements. As you can see I painted in the colours in a fairly solid hues and within the sketched lines. This was an early try at using watercolour effect and wasn’t the loose and expressive look I am after.
I’m even trying out some of Doug’s 10 minute challenges and have - this week - started doing a ‘drawing a day’ (which is good for me). OK, I haven’t yet either done a sketch either in 10 minutes or done one in situe. But I hope to get there eventually.
I think these latest attempt are going slowly in the direction I want to go. Quicker, looser and more expressive, but still hit and miss…
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