My Urban Sketch of a local cafe "O Nuno"
In his YouTube tutorial “How to draw simple faces” Marc Brunet likened sketching to following a recipe. You follow how others create, and then you start making up your own. This approach is all about mastering the basics and then adapting them to your style.
When I stumble across people sketching urban sketcher online I like to copy their sketches to see how they achieve their lines and style, and then make a note of any elements I’d like to incorporate into my own style. Here’s a couple of sketchers that caught my eye this month:
Sneaky Artist
This US based artist has such a distinctive minimalist style and he keeps his figure small and simple. I admire his sketching style but that simplicity doesn’t come naturally to me. I like the idea of sketching pages and pages of little figures. This continued practice would allow me to create some shortcuts sot that I can quickly capture functional elements of a pose so that I can focus on elements or aspects of the pose that I want to be the focal point.
https://www.sneakyartist.com/podcast – check out his podcast where he interviews fellow urban sketchers.
I follow him on Instagram @thesneakyartist.
Jorje Borjes
Jorje pops up on my FB feed as we’re in one of the same Urban Sketching Groups (I’m not sure which). He sketches the same person over and over again (maybe his wife?) – I like the idea of adopting this approach as a way to improve my sketching skills on a familiar face so you are not reinvesting the wheel with every new sketch. He has a simple line stye, that it’s this style that I’ve been trying to develop recently. Simplicity is key when you’re urban sketching, because you never know how quickly the person is going to move out of the frame. So you need to capture the key features and elements as quickly and simply as possible, and not get distracted by trying to capture the details.
I wonder which urban sketchers I’ll discover this month? There’s plenty more out there to inspire my creative journey, and I’ll share them here to inspire yours.
