Want to come back from your travels with a sketchbook full of memories? In this dynamic 4-day Urban Sketchers workshop co-hosted by La Romita School of Art, you’ll learn techniques for quickly capturing scenes in ink & watercolor as you explore Umbria, Italy. You’ll use gestural line to sketch the essence of fleeting moments, whether it’s people at a cafe in the piazza or clouds over a sweeping landscape. Then you’ll add vibrant color to bring your drawings to life.

Each day will bring new places and subjects to inspire and challenge you: markets, ruins, even vineyards. There will be a mix of demos, exercises, and individual instruction in each location. You’ll come away energized and excited to draw!

Participants will learn to:

• Choose and frame a subject, using compositional principles
  
• Simplify architecture and people using gestural, dynamic line
  
• Use appropriate marks for both close-up as well as wide-angle scenes
  
• Tailor their sketches to the place, using a localized palette of colors and textures
  
• Add color to their sketches with loose washes, not bound by the lines drawn.
  
• Selectively “break the rules” of color, tools, and paper to get a fresh perspective
  
• Create a visual narrative of their travels
  

• Arrival and orientation
• Transfer from Rome to workshop location
• Showcase and intro to the workshop
• Survey of sketchbooking styles - words, pictures, collage, textures

• Warm up, getting loose
• Choosing a subject
• Principles of composition
• Close ups, wide angles

• Using gesture for suggestion: buildings, people
• Localizing your sketch - textures, unique features
• Simplified scenes, a sense of place

• Simplifying values
• Focus on light and shadow
• Ink and wash value sketches; coloring sketches

• What color is that? Seeing color in a beige world
• Pushing colors to extremes
• Complementary colors and how to use them for vibrant scenes
• Compositions using contrast and vibrant colors

• Explore options for limited color schemes
• Using different 3- or 4-color palettes

• Putting all the elements together
• Creating a narrative and adding notes
• Series of sketches to tell a story of a place
• Use a sketch as template for “breaking rules”
• Sketching scavenger hunt

My workshop last month -- Sketching Techniques: Layer It On! at Arch Supplies in San Francisco -- combined outdoor sketching with indoor exercises. It was great to see everyone's exploration of mixed media, including layered watercolor and colored pencil.

Here's a peek at some of the demo sketches.







Thanks to everyone who joined!

Are you in the Bay Area? Get ready for spring/summer sketch walks (yes, the rain *will* someday end) with this dynamic workshop! First, we’ll learn to use line to simplify an outdoor scene and lay out balanced compositions. Then we’ll go over how to add vibrant watercolor to bring your designs to life. Weather permitting, we’ll use these techniques to create a progressive series of sketches as we explore the local area. A premium sketchbook, fineliner, and kit of hand-poured watercolors are included in the class fee.

We'll cover:

-How to choose a focal point, and where to place it on the page
-Drawing expressive lines to depict urban scenes
-Mixing a range of colors from just a few primaries
-Using notes of color to unify your sketch
-Creating a narrative with your sketches

Spaces are still available. Sign up now.

Speaking of San Francisco ... a few weeks ago I was up there to take some headshots and I took advantage of the time to dash off a few quick ink sketches of the views from Crissy Field. I colored them in later with watercolors; you can probably tell that I didn't keep my water clean, as the colors got mighty muddy. Lesson well learned!

What a great group we had for my Mindful Sketching class two weekends ago at ARCH Art Supply in San Francisco! We practiced ways to focus and simplify a scene, and then we leaned into bold colors using double-tipped markers -- a departure from the usual ink-and-watercolor routine.

Here's a selection of my demo/prep sketches for the workshop:







It's so liberating not to worry about the actual colors!





We used Staedtler Brush Letter Duo double-ended lettering markers on a Bienfang Mixed Media wirebound sketchbook.



Thanks to everyone who joined! I'm starting to plan workshops for next year, so stay tuned!

What a fantastic group we had for yesterday's workshop at ARCH Art & Drafting Supply in San Francisco!

We practiced techniques for using a minimal kit (sketchbook, fineliner, small watercolor set, and waterbrush, provided by ARCH) to make quick captures of the area around the shop.

Even though that area of Mission Bay is a bit industrial looking, there are still opportunities for interesting compositions.









The exercises were deliberately brief, to get people used to sketching rapidly and spontaneously. I was very impressed with how much everyone achieved given the constraints of time, place, and materials.



I hope it inspired some of the attendees to take up on-location sketching more regularly. Thanks to everyone for joining!

Last weekend, I led the Urban Sketchers Bay Area 10x10 series workshop "From Line to Design" in downtown Redwood City. It was a lovely and sunny day, and we had a fantastic group.



We started out with an emphasis on line and how it can be used for composition, keeping in mind some basics like the rule of thirds, focal points, and balance:



We then moved on to design, considering ways to use color to enhance the initial drawing. We talked about using complementary colors and balancing areas of color across the sketch.



The results were truly a reflection of each artist's individual expression. Thanks to everyone who joined me for the session!



Have you been bitten by the sketching bug? Join me at my July workshop, "Stop, Drop & Sketch!" hosted by ARCH Art & Drafting Supply in San Francisco. All materials are included in the fee. We'll be sketching our way around Mission Bay and learning how to use a minimal kit for maximum enjoyment. Space is limited, so sign up through Eventbrite today.

The heat wave broke and the breeze was fine at San Pedro Square in San Jose for my Urban Sketchers 10x10 Workshop on June 24. The idea was to consider different ways of putting the city into a sketch. We talked about:

Color/Value

• What colors are in the environment? Is there a dominant color?
  
• Sunlight/clouds: Are there shadows, or is the color flat?

• What are the textures in the scene (marble? concrete? cobblestone? wood?)
  
• What are the marks we could use to express the different textures (stippling, hatching, wash, etc.)?
  
• Can we use found materials to draw on? To draw with? To add to the scene via collage?

• Are there right angles? Curves?
  
• Is everything up close, or are there sweeping views?

Got back from a work trip to Boulder, CO, Friday night. Saturday morning, I was up bright and early to paint with Pacific Art League at the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve near Los Altos, CA. The one-day workshop was led by Steve Curl. It's a steep and winding road up into the hills. It was tough to set up to paint there, as the grasses hugging the hiking trail were waist high.

After my initial painting (above), I did a few quick studies to round out the day.

Was excited to take Randy Sexton's workshop "Strait Color," hosted by Arts Benicia, last month. I've been a big fan of his work, plus it was an excuse to explore a new part of the Bay Area.

Randy began the class with a demo of a building in Benicia.

I love to sketch, but I also love to share my passion with other people. Recently I led two activities to help promote art in the local community.

For Google's Take Your Children to Work Day, I facilitated a sketching scavenger hunt. The kids had to solve riddles and then find and draw objects around the campus. I encouraged them to create a visual journal of their visit to Google.

As the kids sketched, I drew the activity around me on a flip chart using the same Scholastic washable markers that everyone was given -- an early morning volleyball game and some people taking a break from work outdoors. The weather was perfect -- bright and sunny. I hope the children had as much fun as I did!

****

Last weekend, I led an outdoor sketching workshop for Art in Action, a Menlo Park-based nonprofit that provides schools with art education programs. I had donated this "art experience" to their fundraising auction earlier in the spring, and the winning bidders were the participants.

We chose the Mountain View farmers market as our meeting point and muse. I talked a little about the basics of sketching outdoors and then sent the participants off to do several studies describing the story of the market. Our humble materials were:

• a Bee Paper Pen Sketcher's sketchbook
• a Sharpie fine point pen
• Yarka pan watercolors
• a Pentel Aquash waterbrush

Last week I discovered, via Flickr, the spontaneous, energy-filled watercolors of New York City artist Anne Watkins. When I saw that she was starting a weekly plein air class, I jumped at the chance to join. After all, I've long been a fan of artists like her and Lucy Willis who are of the Who-Needs-Pencil-Drawings-When-You-Can-Go-Straight-To-Paint school. My own past attempts at it have been, shall we say, not ready for prime time.

As the sun slowly set in the Flatiron district, the building-tops glowed with an ethereal light. After a quick demo by Anne, it was time for us to take the plunge. I think I got more comfortable as the evening wore on -- do you agree?







As I painted, I realized I was doing three things outside my comfort zone -- all at once!

(1) Working with flat brushes. Anne encouraged us to use 3/4-inch and other flats to their advantage, allowing their shape and edges to define areas of light and dark in the urban environment.

(2) Sketching on Arches paper. I'd used it only for more studied plein air work and studio watercolor paintings. It sucks paint up quickly, so I found that it's very important to use lots of saturated color and keep lights light and darks dark.

(3) Omitting the initial ink or pencil drawing. Boy, was this hard! In my usual work, I obviously rely a great deal on defining edges with line instead of shapes. Whether or not I work in the direct-to-watercolor style going forward, it's certainly extremely valuable to do this exercise, as it's a reinforcement of how much painting is about value contrasts and the juxtaposition of shapes.

Can't wait to try this again!

Was glad to be in Vermont, truly -- after it was ravaged by Tropical Storm Irene, I really wanted to support the state, spend money in its restaurants, eat maple candy and gawk at the glorious foliage. How fortuitous that I'd signed up for Susan Abbott's fall Vermont landscape workshop, I thought.

Well, we did the first three. The foliage (what there was of it) hid behind mists and drizzles and on-and-off downpours. Not the most auspicious weather for plein air landscapes. Despite my moodiness, and the bugs, and the mud, there was sketching. And painting. (Some outdoors, even.)

We stayed at Pie in the Sky B&B in Marshfield for the first two nights. They have sheep. (And a guard llama, which didn't stay in one spot long enough to make it into my sketchbook.)



Later in the week we stayed at Emergo Farms B&B, in Danville -- it's a dairy farm that supplies Cabot.



While it rained, we did exercises in the studio:







And when the clouds parted, we rushed outside hoping to avoid the ambush of sudden showers.





The rain helped paint this one:



It's hard to be spontaneous when faced with a sheet of Arches paper. I like this color sketch better than the actual painting I did right after.





We sketched and painted on lands private and public. People have a lot of land up there.







So? Go! Go wander Montpelier and buy art supplies at The Drawing Board, eat at Tip Top Cafe in White River Junction and Elements in St. Johnsbury. Bike the Kingdom Trails rain or shine. And at the end of the day, savor a maple creamy at Bragg Farm. Yum.