Urban Sketching - A few tips for your journey

Urban Sketching

This is such an easy thing to do, and such a simple idea, but it’s something that people tend to get really passionate about. If some of you reading this page are inspired to get out and start sketching for yourself, then I’d be really proud.

What is it?

Like I said, it’s a simple idea. If you want to get right down to basics, urban sketching is just giving a name to something that loads of people have been doing for a long time – sketching the world around them. As a movement, it began in Canada, as a group of sketchers in an online forum  “for all sketchers out there who love to draw the cities where they live and visit, from the window of their homes, from a cafe, at a park, standing by a street corner.” I suppose that the big difference between this and the thousands of people who had already been doing this themselves was the idea of a community, and the use of the internet – Facebook, blogs etc, - as a forum and gallery.

The manifesto of the Urban Sketching Community is: -

We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation.

Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel.

Our drawings are a record of time and place.

We are truthful to the scenes we witness.

We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles.

We support each other and draw together.

We share our drawings online.

We show the world, one drawing at a time.

Now, as a statement of aims and principles, if that doesn’t light your candle I respectfully suggest that you may be reading the wrong article. 

If you’re still interested. Then here’s a few observations which might hopefully help you make up your mind to give it a try. 

1) It really isn’t about being ‘good’ at it.

When I talk to people about Urban Sketching, the first negative note that they strike is – ‘I’m no good at drawing’. To which I reply that your ability is irrelevant. If you want to produce a perfect photographic representation of a scene, then take a photo. Good is a subjective concept, anyway. I know what I mean by the word when applied to a sketch, but chances are you may have quite a different idea.

* It’s not a competition – you will always see sketches by other sketchers that you think are much ‘better’ than yours. I do, a lot. But here’s the thing - it doesn’t matter. Your sketches will have value for what they are, and not for what they are not. 

* The more you sketch, the more likely you are to improve anyway.

* Your sketch is your vision, it’s your interpretation of a small part of your world. Urban sketchers like to share work, but at the end of the day it is up to you whether you share, and if you do, other urban sketchers will respect it for that.

2) You don’t have to follow a set of rules

When you start urban sketching, you’re not burdened down by any onerous set of rules and regulations to follow. You won’t be told words to the effect of – “All well and good, but it’s not an urban sketch because . . . “

So, for example, if you sketch on your own, it’s still an urban sketch, and if you sketch with a friend or a group, it’s still an urban sketch. If you’re sketching a building it’s an urban sketch, and if you sketch a person sitting at a table inside a building, it’s still an urban sketch. Don’t let the word ‘urban’ restrict you. This seemingly idyllic country scene on the left: -

is just as much an urban sketch as this town centre shopping mall below: -

It can still be an urban sketch whether you sketch with an ordinary graphite HB pencil, or a biro, or an elegant fountain pen, or a specialist sketching ink pen. It can be a sketch if you leave it monochrome, or if you apply watercolour to it. It’s your sketch, so the decision is all yours.

Now, bearing in mind the Urban Sketching manifesto we looked at earlier, you might well say – do you HAVE to sketch on location? - Well, preferably, yes. But I personally wouldn’t say that there is anything wrong starting your sketch on location, but using a reference photo taken

at the same time to finish off details later on.

For example, in June 2017 I made this sketch of a derelict old building I saw as I was driving through the Afan Valley. I stopped, whipped out pen and sketchbook, and began. It was a blazingly hot day, though, and after about 30 minutes I could feel that I was going to be in trouble if I didn’t go out of the sun. So I took a reference photo, and finished the sketch later on at home.

I usually carry a small pocket camera with me as well as sketchbook and pen, in case I don’t get to finish the sketch that I am making. Also, if you’re just starting out, or if you’re looking to improve your sketching I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with practising with your own photographs. If you are going to do this, though, try to use your own photographs. At least they show your vision, rather than somebody else’s, and remember, this is just preparation for getting outside and doing it for real.

3) You can start anywhere, and any time.

It’s only natural to feel a little nervous and self-conscious the first time that you make a sketch on location. But you don’t necessarily have to start out in public. If you’re nervous, maybe you could start with the great indoors rather than the great outdoors. What can you sketch in your own house? Well, pretty much anything, really. Here’s one of the first sketches I made when I was first turned on to urban sketching.

It’s a vase of lilies, which was sitting on the telephone table next to my TV chair. Now, if I was to sketch the same subject today I would go about it in a different way. I’d probably use a pen, mostly because I like the graphic quality that a shaded pen and ink drawing can give you. I’d also probably put it in context by drawing in some of the surroundings. Is it a caught moment in time? Maybe not as obviously as some of my sketches, but at least it captured that moment when the lilies were mostly part opened.

Another sketch I made at the time was this one. My granddaughter Amelia was about 16 months old when I sketched her while she was having an afternoon nap. I’m so pleased I did this, because it caught that moment in time, and also that moment in Amelia’s life. Really and truly, it was a perfect opportunity to create a sketch, since Amelia is only ever still enough to sketch while she is asleep.

When you’re ready to take your sketching into the world outside, people usually don’t even react when you’re making a sketch on location, and when they do react, it’s nearly always in a noncommittal or a positive way. If you’re sketching solo, then there’s no rules about how you should react if a passer-by interests him or herself in your sketch, but as in everything else, a little politeness costs nothing.

4) You can sketch ANYTHING. Every picture can tell a story

Lots of people get into urban sketching as an enjoyable way of preserving memories of trips or journeys. Not long after I began making my first urban sketches at home I made a visit to Ieper in Belgium, during which time I made several sketches of notable buildings, including this sketch of the famous Cloth Hall. I made this while enjoying a coffee at a café in the shadow of the hall. I’m not very good at sitting down and just letting the world go by, but making a detailed sketch like this one requires time, and so I had to sit there for a while. All the time, I was looking at the building more and more closely, seeing the details in a way I wouldn’t have done if I’d only taken a photograph. Not only that, but several Belgian passers by stopped to look, and I had lovely conversations with all of them. All of which built my confidence, and encouraged me to go out and about my local town and sketch some of the more interesting buildings. 

So, for example, I sketched this, the empty 1940’s cinema just a few hundred yards from my house. After I returned from Belgium I made a decision to try out a specialist ink sketching pen. While I love the subtlety that you can get in shading using even an ordinary HB pencil, I really wanted to try to get the graphic quality I’ve seen in other sketcher’s ink sketches. While a derelict building may not be everyone’s idea of a good subject for a sketch, the point is that I thought it was, and since I was the one sketching it, then that was all that mattered.

* If you take up urban sketching, over a period of time your ‘eye’ will develop.

I guarantee that once you’ve been urban sketching for a while, your own style will develop and crystallise, and your way of looking at things, of seeing things will change. If you compare two of the pictures I’ve already shown you, it might be easier to explain: -

Both of them are sketches of derelict buildings in Port Talbot which should be a lot better looked after than they currently are. On the earlier sketch, of the cinema, that’s pretty much all you get. There’s no context to it, nothing really to distract you from the building itself. While the recent sketch on the right doesn’t just give you the building, it also gives you the context – the houses and buildings on the roadway above and to the left, and the hillside in the background. To my eye, the picture on the right tells a story of a building that had been neglected, but still has a pride and dignity.

5) There is no such thing as failure when you make urban sketches

We’ve already said that your sketches will have value for what they are, and that’s true. Taking that a little further, this means that even when you’re not happy with the sketch you have produced, it still has value. For example, this is a sketch I made in Easter 2017 during a short visit to Prague.

The structure is a famous Prague landmark, the 14th century Charles Bridge. Time was that I would have considered this sketch a failure. It’s not that there’s a huge amount ‘wrong’ with what’s there, bar the fact that it’s unfinished. I’d already been out sketching for an hour and a half, during which time I’d made two or three other sketches, and it was a bitterly cold day, which meant that by the time I’d got this far my fingers were numb, and so I abandoned it. I didn’t take a photograph in order to finish this off later. So I would have to say that I don’t think that it compares to this sketch I made from the other side of the bridge an hour earlier.

Even so, it still has some value, even if it’s just as the ‘sketch abandoned because I couldn’t feel my fingers any more’. 

What do I have to use?

That’s up to you. There are no hard and fast rules about what medium you should work in. Pen and ink is very popular, but maybe you’d feel happier starting off with an ordinary HB graphite pencil. The important thing is to use what you are comfortable with, and use what will be most likely to produce the results you want. You might like to look online at other people’s work, and see the results they achieve using pencils, biro, ink pen etc. This will give you an idea of the sort of media you’d like to work in yourself. For what it’s worth, my own personal feelings are: - 

Graphite pencils – 

·       make it easy to remove rogue marks from your page. 

·       They enable you to do more subtle shading than ink. 

·       May be a good place for you to start

·       Don’t make such a distinctive mark on the page, and don’t photograph or scan as well as ink if you want to display your work online.

This is a sketch of the famous Menin Gate memorial in Ieper in Belgium, made on the spot using a plain HB pencil. You can get good results with ordinary pencil, and if you prefer to use one, then you don’t need to look anywhere else.

Charcoal –

·       A good charcoal sketch is a work of art.

·       Charcoal sketches photocopy and scan better than graphite sketches.

·       You can get charcoal pencils, which give you the expressiveness of charcoal, together with the ease of use of a pencil.

·       It can be harder to make fine lines and sketch in details on a small pad using charcoal

·       Charcoal is a ‘messy’ medium

This charcoal sketch of Margam Castle in Port Talbot demonstrates some of the attraction of using charcoal, or charcoal pencils. However I find a sketch like this in charcoal takes far longer to make than an equivalent in ink, and for me, the way that you blend charcoal in a picture makes it different to a straightforward sketch.

Biro –

·       Biro sketches tend to scan or photograph better than pencil sketches. 

·       You may have a biro that you’re particularly comfortable writing with, and so might be more comfortable sketching with it.

·       Biros are not primarily made for sketching. The ink doesn’t flow as well or as smoothly as in a specialist sketching pen. Even expensive biros can leave small blobs which will smudge.

This is another sketch that I made in Ieper Belgium. I used an ordinary Parker jotter biro to sketch some of the ornamental detail on the world famous Cloth Hall. I became frustrated with the uneven flow of ink, and the scratchy nature of the shading lines. I find it more difficult to achieve good effects using hatching and crosshatching when I’m working in biro.

Cartridge/Fountain Pen-

·       Sketches with this kind of ink pen scan and photograph better than graphite sketches.

·       This kind of pen is often a bit thicker than a biro or sketching pen, and many people find them clumsier to use because of this.

·       Ordinary fountain/cartridge pen ink dries more slowly than biro ink, or sketching pen ink. Using this kind of pen you run the greatest risk of smudging.

·       Most ordinary fountain/cartridge pens have a nib which makes a line that is rather thicker than is ideal for sketching. 

Gel Pen -

·       Gel pens have the same advantages as a biro, and the ink flows more freely and evenly than in a biro.

·       Personally, I don’t often like sketching with a ballpen – and a gel pen is essentially a ballpen, it just has a different kind of ink. I find that ballpens can be very unforgiving if you put even slightly too much pressure on the paper.

Ordinary felt tip – felt writing pen-

·       A felt tip colouring pen will produce sketches that copy, photograph and scan better than a graphite pencil.

·       A felt tip colouring pen has a nib which is thick – too thick, in my opinion, for sketching.

·       A felt tip note writer does use a kind of ink which has a habit of soaking through even a quality sheet of paper.

Specialist Sketching Pen -

·       Produces sketches which consistently photograph, scan, and copy better than graphite. 

·       Comes in a variety of nib sizes, which makes it easier to reproduce detail

·       Uses ink which a) – dries almost instantaneously, and b) – will not show through the back of a piece of quality sketching paper

·       Is still highly effective if you apply a watercolour wash to it.

·       Is more expensive than any ordinary pen or pencil.

St. Catherine’s Church, Baglan, Port Talbot. The first sketch I ever made with a specialist sketching pen. The fact that I have been using pens like this to sketch with ever since should give you an idea of how highly I rate them. The lines have the boldness of biro, and actually scan or photograph even better than biro in my opinion. The shading effects are better – in my opinion – than you get with biro, and I find them easier to sketch with than even a good biro.

Watercolour

I personally wouldn’t make a sketch using just a paintbrush and paint. However, there you can get some great effects by adding washes of watercolour to your ink sketches. Here’s one of the examples I’m happiest with: -

St. Joseph’s Church, Port Talbot.

My first urban sketches, like the sketches of the Menin Gate and the Cloth Hall, were made with a graphite pencil. Subsequently I tried biro, gel pen and felt writing pen, but I’ve settled on specialist sketching pens, which produce results closest to what I want.

But remember – there’s no hard and fast rules. It’s what works for you. 

Paper

I don’t recall ever making an urban sketch on the back of an envelope, but I’ve used a wide variety of paper in my time, much of which was never intended to be sketched on. 

The fact is that you can get decent results on whatever you use. There’s no rule which says that you can’t use an A4 pad of plain paper from your local supermarket, which will cost you next to nothing. Of course, the paper itself is likely to be only slightly thicker than tissue paper, and so don’t expect to get your very best results on it. 

You can buy a sketchbook for not a lot more. When you’re starting out there’s not a huge amount of difference between the sketchbook you buy for a pound in a discount store, and a sketchbook that costs four times as much for half the number of pages in a specialist art suppliers. 

As your eye develops, and you start doing things like applying watercolour washes to your sketches, though, you will find a difference. Personally, I like a soft cover, 20 page sketchbook from a well known art supply company, with paper that is 140 gsm/2. That’s still a lighter paper than I’d use to paint a full watercolour, but it takes a watercolour wash quite well.

If you’re going to carry a sketchbook with you almost everywhere you go, then an A4 book is not the most practical choice. A5 is a much handier size, but I think that it’s still large enough to allow you to make a detailed sketch of a whole scene. While I like A4 as well, for most of my sketches I use an A5 book.

Once again, though, there’s no rules about it. My advice is to try out different papers and sizes of sketchbooks, and when you find what works for you, then use it.

With materials, as with almost anything else – you get what you pay for. Maybe when you’re starting out there’s not that much difference between the results you can achieve on using very basic pens and paper, and more expensive specialist pens and sketchbooks. As you improve, though, the difference in quality should become more noticeable.

How can I start? :

If I’ve managed to whet your appetite for sketching then you really should start straightaway. Once you’ve started making sketches, then the whole process should become something normal to you, and once you get over a few mental hurdles this should become a source of relaxation and pleasure to you.

Let’s remind ourselves of a couple of things before we start: - 

* Whatever you make, it is your sketch, and has validity for that reason. You don’t HAVE to show it to anyone. 

* Whatever you may think of how good or otherwise your sketches are, they are your starting point. This is just the beginning of your journey. 

* There are many, many urban sketching forums on the internet where you can explain that you are just starting out, and show your sketches, and get positive feedback on them. That’s really half the fun of making them. 

When you're sketching

* Spend a bit of time thinking about the vantage point from which you will make your sketch, and then simplify the image – in your head, cut out the things that you don’t want to include. Try to visualise what your finished sketch will look like.

* With the drawing, mostly, it’s just lines, straight lines, and curved lines. Take the most important element of your sketch, and start by constructing its outline, one line at a time. Look at the way that lines relate to each other – see which lines are essentially repeating a shape that you have already made.

* Now sketch in the outlines of other elements of your sketch.

* Decide how much detail you wish to include, and then sketch in these details.

* Apply shading – you can use a mixture of hatching, cross hatching and black shading  to create different intensities of shadow. 

* Practise doesn’t necessarily make perfect, but we’re not aiming for perfection. Practice making sketches in this way until you don’t even have to think about what to do next when you’re making one. 

Sketching Outside: Buildings

An urban sketch doesn’t have to feature a building. However, if you search online you’ll find that the vast majority of urban sketches people want to share with the world do depict buildings in some form or other. The rest of this section is a tutorial on how you might like to go about constructing a sketch of a real building. As with the previous section, I have to demonstrate with a photograph, but the same techniques apply when you’re sketching en plein air.

Cardiff Wales National Assembly Building

This is an example of the kind of sketches of buildings I was making in my earlier days as an urban sketcher – I’d do it from a different angle if I sketched the same building today. There just so happened to be a handy bench right in front of it, though . . .

Your first sketching expedition

You’ll know when you feel ready to take your first steps in sketching outdoors. When you are, it’s only natural to feel a bit nervous or apprehensive. I feel there’s two ways of approaching this.

Approach One – Make it as easy on yourself as possible

* Go local. Ideally you’re looking for a subject to sketch that is in easy walking distance, that you know well and don’t mind staring at for a little while, and that has a convenient place for you to sit and sketch it.

* Don’t burden yourself down with equipment. Take one sketchbook, and whichever implement you want to sketch with. That’s enough for now.

* Decide before you go how long you’re going to want to spend. Are you going to stay until it’s finished, or give yourself a maximum amount of time to spend on the sketch? Whatever you decide, stick to it.

Approach Two – Make it a special event

* Make a proper outing of it. 

* Plan to visit somewhere you’d like to spend a day or an afternoon visiting.

* Take a bag, that way you can carry lunch and a drink as well as your equipment.

* Spend time choosing a subject that appeals to you when you get there. Going away from your local area has the benefit of the fact that everyone else there at the time will be a stranger to you, which should reduce the amount you feel self-conscious and embarrassed. 

* Allow as long as it takes to make your sketch, but also do other things you enjoy while you’re there, so the sketch will also become a memory of a good day.

Whichever approach you use: - 

* You’ll probably feel rather self-conscious at first. Don’t worry, it’s natural. For pretty much everyone the feeling does fade quickly when you become absorbed in the sketch you are making. You’ll probably find that concentrating on your sketch may even give you an invisible aura which will discourage people from staring at you or approaching you. 

* If you’re desperate to avoid contact with other members of the public, consider putting in a pair of earphones which are connected to your phone, or any other personal device. Even if you leave your phone switched off, they’re not to know that. This will just act as a little deterrent. 

In my experience, if someone does approach and seem to be interested in what you’re doing, stopping to smile and give them a better look at the sketch is a polite way of responding, and in most cases the person involved will either just smile, or pass a brief comment and go on their way, allowing you to get on with the sketch in hand. 

* Look Critically and appraise your sketch

By this, I don’t rip it to shreds., either metaphorically or literally. Criticism as a word has a negative connotation, but really it means looking at your work objectively, seeking the bits you’ve done well, as well as the bits you think you could have done better. The point is that if you like the way one aspect of your sketch has turned out, well, it would be nice to be able to repeat this in your future sketches. If you’re not happy with the sketch, then try to give yourself a little bit of time to think about what it is that you don’t like. Chances are it will boil down to one or two things – it won’t be the whole sketch that you don’t like. Perhaps you don’t like the positioning of the building on the page. Perhaps the shading in one or more parts doesn’t work like you thought it would. Whatever the case, identifying what you don’t like as a sketch will help you start weeding out the aspects of your own work that you’re not happy about.

* Don’t expect too much in you first sketch made outside, in public. Once you’ve made this sketch, then you’ve already succeeded in what you set out to do. Whatever your opinion of the artistic merits of the sketch that you’ve just produced, cherish it for the fact that it marks an important step forward on your journey.