Book Review: 5-Minute Sketching – People By Pete Scully

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Larry Marshall

One of the first urban sketchers I started trying to mimic was Pete Scully. When I was getting started in sketching he was creating small building portraits (often two to a page in Moleskine watercolor sketchbooks). He also got me hooked on drawing fire hydrants and I continue to learn from his sketches.

Today, though, I want to talk about Pete’s new book, 5-Minute Sketching: People. It’s part of what may become a series from Firefly books. When I reviewed Liz Steel’s book in this series I made some comments about how structured, and to my mind limiting, the publisher-dictated format was and if you haven’t read that review I encourage you to do do so here.

While some of those limitations do affect discussion of sketching people, I think it’s less limiting than for sketching buildings for a couple reasons. I think, far more real-time people sketching is done in less than 5-minutes than is building sketching and, for so many people, quick-sketching is so foreign that there are a lot of useful tips one can provide that are quite separate from the actual drawing itself. Pete does a great job of talking about how to capture people quickly, how to put yourself in good positions to do so, and how to make those captures interesting.

Section one is titled How To See, and Pete starts out with some basic dimensional anatomy of the human form. There are sections on arms and legs, faces, and all the things you’d expect to find in a ‘how to see humans’ section. This expands into sections regarding quick composition and simple backgrounds, to bring your sketches to life. He talks about playing with perspective and using negative space to position people in a scene as you draw and each of these sections is a series of hints and tips to related to each topic.

Section two is titled Quick On The Draw and here Pete emphasizes the need for speed. His discussions run the gamet from drawing quick portraits to some great tips for drawing a crowd of people quickly. There’s an interesting section on capturing conversation in sketch form and another on how to capture passers-by using compositing ideas and building up your visual memory capabilities. This section, and the next, form the meat and potatoes of the book with a bundle of great ideas, some of which I’ve done, some not… yet.

Section three of the 5-Minute Sketching series is titled Time-Saving Techniques and here Pete emphasizes the use of different line techniques; how to do simple tonal sketching; how to sketch over color and other approaches that help to provide quicker, but more satisfying sketches.

Section four is titled Speedy Supplies and Pete provides series of tips to help when using pencil, pen and ink, markers, pastels, etc. as well as providing some advice on things like paper choice and even a bit on using digital media. I confess that I didn’t get much from this section but I’m fairly myopic in my choice of medium so that’s probably the reason.

While this book won’t teach you how to draw, it should be very helpful for those wanting to get out and draw people on location. If you’ve never done it, it’s a daunting task but Pete’s tips should put your mind at ease and provide a gentle nudge to get you out the door.

Are Sketching Doldrums A Thing?

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Larry Marshall

Every November I go through a down period when it comes to sketching. It’s sort of like I’ve got the clutch disengaged as I change gears. In the meantime my brain is spinning in neutral. My daily outdoor sketching routine comes to an end and I’m waffling around, trying to figure out how I’m going to survive the winter as a sketcher in Quebec City. This year is particularly bad because out provincial ‘austerity’ plan has gutted the budgets of the few local museums in Quebec City and so my typical winter haunts are nearly barren.

But I did meet our tiny group at the main library and we sketched one morning last week so I’ll share those little sketches with you. All were done in my tiny Stillman & Birn Alpha (3.5×5.5) softcover sketchbook.

The sketch on the left was the last outdoor sketch I did this year. I was leaning against a wall, trying to keep warm and I drew very quickly, but not quick enough as I gave up before I could start adding any details to it. It’s here only because it’s on the same spread as the sketch on the right which was the first sketch I did at the library. From the 2nd floor of the library you can see this building across the street.

When I finished I went hunting for my fellow sketchers and found them sketching a display in the kid book section. This winter will see me doing a lot of these quick sketches of people. Maybe, with the help of recent books by Pete Scully and Lynne Chapman I’ll figure out how to do them better.

When I finished with those sketches I went looking for a third member of our group and found her upstairs, sketching the street below. She was near to finishing and we were all going to meet for an early lunch, so I quickly did a few more real quick sketches of people who were reading. Here’s two of them.

As I’ve suggested, I’m not sure where my sketching will go this winter. There are several things I’d like to work on this winter and, I suppose, I’ll be doing a bunch of ‘studio’ sketching this winter. Wish I had a studio (grin).

Sketching A Mineral Display

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Larry Marshall

We’re entering sketching winter in Quebec City. This is when the notion of street sketching is absurd and so we’ve got to start looking for hard to find indoor locations to feed our urges to put pen to paper.

I got an email from Claudette telling me about permission she obtained for us to sketch a rock display in the lobby of one of the government buildings. My initial reaction was “huh?” and an assumption that I didn’t understand the French (my default reaction to most things because it is generally true). I love drawing rock cliffs and even piles of rocks but a geologic display of rocks? Didn’t make sense.

I almost didn’t go but I’m glad I did as it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Besides it was warm inside and raining outside. During the morning session I drew three rocks, a green one, an almost clear one, and a yellow one. I’d give you more details about these minerals but that’s all I know. Geology is not my thing. The results aren’t great art but they do represent a lot of fun and I’d love to have another shot at drawing some of these unique and complex shapes.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5x8.5), Platinum 3776

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Platinum 3776

Rosemary Brushes – What A Company!

Posted on October 23, 2016 by Larry Marshall

I’m a pen guy. When I pick up a brush I’m mostly lost and I certainly don’t have the experience to talk with authority about different brushes. But I’ve been hearing a lot about Rosemary & Co brushes, particularly Liz Steel’s love affair with the short dagger brushes (series 772). Because US art vendors are dealing with customers on my side of the apparent iron curtain that is the US/Canada border, I thought I’d give Rosemary a try, using the dagger brushes as an excuse.

You’d expect that here I’d launch into a discussion of my new brushes but as I say, I’m not qualified to assess brushes. I can say I like them and the sable blend seems to yield a good compromise between water retention and snap, but I’m still getting used to the shape. Much better information about these brushes is available from Liz’s site, particularly here.

The reason for this post is to talk about the company a bit. They are amazing. First, they charged me about $10 to ship the two brushes. Blicks wanted $20 the last time I tried to buy a couple brushes from them. What was truly amazing about Rosemary & Co, though, is that they got my brushes to me in three days. I swear they must have off-season Quidditch players doing their delivery. I takes longer than that for me to get stuff from Toronto and let’s not start a discussion of how long it takes to get something from New York to Quebec (grin). Can you tell I like Rosemary & Co.

I do want to warn you of one thing. They have a very sinister way of baiting you into buying more brushes. When you order they send you this amazing, 60 page catalog that is filled with beautiful, mouth-watering photographs of brushes. They know we’re suckers for art stuff so they make theirs irresistable and then, just to make you bite, they price them reasonably. What’s a guy to do. I know. I think I’ll order some more.

Quebec Forests On Fire, But No Smoke

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Larry Marshall

Our harbor is clogged with cruise ships. It’s that time of year when everyone wants to float along the St. Lawrence River, looking at the hillsides on either side of the river and this is a particularly good year for autumn leaf watchers. While the trees have responded to changing day length by ceasing chlorophyll production, we’ve maintained enough warmth and lack of wind that the leaves have been late in falling, creating an amazing blaze of reds, yellows and golds. Some of the trees are so bright that they are hard to believe. Maybe someone is painting them.

Chantal and I have been driving around on the weekends, visiting different places under the auspices of sketching and adventuring, but mostly just to enjoy the sunshine and the trees. Mostly we just enjoyed being outside in the sunshine.

My arthritis has disabled my drawing hand so I haven’t really done a lot of sketching, but my heart’s in the right place and that’s something. I’m hoping the hand will return to normal soon and I can get back to sketching more. In the face of our excursions hither and yon to visit forests, there is some irony in the fact that the sketch I present to you here was done no more than a 10-minute walk from my house. I sat at the edge of a park and drew this amazing tree and its surroundings. Hope you like it.

Stillman & Birn Beta (8x10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black