Book Review: 5-Minute Sketching – Architecture By Liz Steel

coverThis will be a very biased review.  I have followed Liz Steel’s blog and Facebook posts for several years.  She’s been one of the most giving artists within our sketching world.  She’s also one of the best.  I’ve taken all three of Liz’s online classes and have found them truly amazing because Liz “gets it” when it comes to teaching art.  She’s one of my sketching heros.

Firefly Books has just launched a new “5-Minute Sketching” series of books and Liz Steel and Pete Scully have had their books in that series launched simultaneously.  They’re both winners in my book and I’ll be reviewing Pete’s book at a later date.  I do want to say a couple things about the series.  The content of these books is tightly organized by the publisher.  Each has four chapters with identical titles, and many of the sub-section titles are identical as well, particularly in chapters three and four.  It’s interesting to see how Liz and Pete have packed a wealth of knowledge into this somewhat restrictive construct, adjusting it to fit their particularly topic.

I do a lot of quick-sketching but I have to say that I feel that the notion that you can write books about “5-minute sketching” without filling them with yet another discussion of gesture drawing smacks of naivete on the part of the publisher.  Even Liz, who is a very fast architectural sketcher, will spend far more than five minutes sketching any building more complex than a simple box.  Lucky for us, Liz acknowledges this in her introduction and then proceeds to provide her information as though we’re trying to work quickly, but not unreasonably so.

Lastly, I confess that I’m an academic.  It grates on me that brilliant artists are supposed to boil down teaching art into “tips” rather than complete discussions of the subject.  For those new to the subject it’s clearly the case that many tips will generate “How do I do that?” responses from those trying to learn to draw.  Of course, the flip-side of this is that these kinds of books are starting to fill the needs of people who have moved beyond basic drawing skills and who want books about how to approach subjects, how to use basic skills to solve problems, etc.

Liz’s book does exactly that.  She is not teaching you how to draw buildings.  She’s teaching how to sketch buildings quickly and well.  She has managed to pack so much information into this book that it takes considerable effort to read and think about what is written and how it might apply to your own sketching.  This is a book you’ll want to read more than once.  It’s a book you’ll want to study and apply to your art.

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The first chapter emphasizes how to “see” the buildings you want to draw.  Liz places emphasis on seeing the volumes of the buildings, how to lay out basic structure so that the actual drawing can go much more quickly and freely.  She discusses using the advantages of actually having the building in front of you to simplify your approach to perspective in what she refers to as “pointless perspective.”  There’s also an interesting set of tips on using distortion to add some playfulness to your drawings.

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Chapter two jumps into the actual drawing of buildings, providing insights into how to identify and simplify various aspects of buildings.  She covers everything from simple houses to large historic buildings.  She provides a bunch of great tips for drawing interiors, complete streetscapes, bridges and even construction sites.  As mentioned above, she’s not showing you how to draw these in five minutes but her ideas will help you improve both your sketches and the speed at which you can accomplish them.

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Chapter three is a fun one for me.  It’s titled Time-Saving Techniques and Liz talks about approaches that allow you to capture volumes quickly, like using a minimum of lines, rapidly creating volumes with restated lines, working smaller and working with tonal values to capture volumes.  There’s a lot of material in this section and trying all the techniques would require considerable time and effort but I’m looking forward to doing exactly that.

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Chapter four is all about how using different materials can change your approach.  The book is not materials-centric and Liz herself has worked in so many ways that it’s natural for her to talk about using pen and ink, watercolors, markers, pencils, watercolor pencils, colored pencils and in each section on each she provides information that causes me to want to try them too.  She does this both to show you how these materials change your approach but also to provide insight into how to use each.

This book provides lots of ideas you’ll want to pursue.  If you need more information than Liz could provide in the book, her Sketching Now web page is the entry point to three courses she provides, titled Foundations, Edges, and Buildings.  In my opinion, they should be taken in that order.  They are some of the best pedagogy available in online art training and I highly recommend them.

In conclusion, if you’re interested in drawing buildings on location, or just want to improve your location sketching in general, this is a book worthy of your time.

Late Fall Sketching Is The Best

Ever notice that when things come as a surprise they’re just a bit better?  We’re experiencing some late fall weather that’s been really great and it’s extended my outdoor sketching season.  This surprise has been sweetened even more by my boss and true love (some call her my wife) wanting to sketch with me.  Life is great.

We found ourselves on Ile d’Orleans, the island I’ve mentioned in recent posts and we were back in the park I discussed here.  Chantal wanted to sketch the large hotel building and I sat down to sketch an old house on that sits on a hill in the park.

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

Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10), Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Brown

When I finished up I went looking for Chantal and found her working away on her sketch.  Not wanting to interrupt her, I sat down and started doodling details of the building she was drawing.  I need to do this more often cuz it’s fun… lots of fun.  I probably could have organized them better on the page but I gave that no thought as I just kept scibbling until the pages were full.  You might want to click on the graphic to enlarge it a bit.  Do you ever do this?

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

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

 

Why I’m Not Doing InkTober, Or Am I?

1Near the end of September I was asked, “Are you doing InkTober?”  I gave a simple answer of “No, I don’t really like challenges.”  Actually, I love InkTober because I get to see so many ink sketches done by many people who don’t normally work in ink and/or who use InkTober to do quicker, simpler sketches than they normally do.

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A couple days into InkTober I was asked, “Why aren’t you doing InkTober?”  I answered that “I draw in ink all the time.  I don’t need a challenge to get me to do it.”  The response that came back was a surprise.  It implied that there was something wrong with me and that I would draw more regularly and improve my ink skills if I did InkTober and that I should be participating.

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56After I came down off the ceiling over someone telling me what I should or should not do with my chosen hobby, I got to thinking and those thoughts ran along these lines.  How can this person, who follows my blog, not know that 1) I draw almost EVERYTHING in ink and 2) that I draw constantly without needing a challenge to get me to draw daily?

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Out of curiosity, and possibly with just a hint of grumbling over this out of the blue indictment, I looked at what I’ve posted on my blog so far this year.  Here’s the arithmetic:

9posts during first 9 months of this year: 289
number of months: 9
ink drawings done and posted per month: 31

I’ve done and posted InkTober numbers of sketches EVERY month this year.  I’m not bragging here.  It’s just what I do.  Others do more…much more.  I don’t think a lot of people realize just how much sketching/art is done by many artists.   I thought maybe these numbers would give you some indication.

10 1112I realized, however, that this isn’t the whole picture.  Those 31 sketches per month are only the ones I decided to scan and post.  I do dozens of smaller, experimental, dare I say trivial sketches every month.  Many are done on location but often they’re done while I watch TV.  While I don’t waste time scanning/posting them, they are a very important part of my learning process.

So, I went through the books that hold these sketches and scanned a few of them.  Decisions of which sketches to scan were made to give some indication of the variation in quality of those sketches and variation in subject matter.

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So, when I tell you I don’t do InkTober, realize that it’s not that I don’t like InkTober.  It’s that I’m doing it all the time.  I just don’t acknowledge that October is any different from any other month.  Hope you like at least a couple of these tiny sketches and, if you’re doing InkTober, that you have a lot of fun doing it.  I’ll enjoy looking at your sketches.

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Getting Away From The Noise

For the last few weeks our street has been under construction.  The city is replacing sewer/water lines, repaving the street, replacing our sidewalks, installing new streetlights and, hopefully, they’re going to re-sod the parts of our lawns that are currently torn up.

What does this have to do with sketching?  Not much I suppose except that Chantal and I were all full up with the noise, particularly the beep, beep, beep of trucks and machinery backing up.  So we left.

We drove out to Ile d’Orleans, the large island I mentioned a couple posts ago.  We headed directly to La Boulange, a little slice of heaven that overlooks the St. Lawrence and that has great coffee and pastries.  During our visit we also learned that they have fantastic pesto pizza.  We enjoyed good food, sunshine and some quiet as we at on their veranda.

2016-09-21-60laboulangestatueThe only sketch I did from that location was this little quickie (maybe five minutes) that I scribbled into a small Stillman & Birn (3.5×5.5) sketchbook.  The bit of color was splashed on from a 4-color palette I carry, using a waterbrush as my splashing device.

When the pizza, coffee and pastry was gone we decided to head to the other side of the island (north side) to visit the large church, and its associated park because it’s a great place to sketch.  Chantal wanted to sketch the gazebo that sits at one end of the park.  I decided that was a pretty good idea and we enjoyed some more sun as we sat together sketching.  This was my result.  It was really nice to get away from the noise and we returned refreshed and ready for another round of beep, beep, beep.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (8.5x5.5), Platinum 3776

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

A Perfect Sketching Day On Ile d’Orleans

Just east of Quebec City, in the St. Lawrence River, there is a huge island that is filled with farms, vineyards, and about a gazillion apple trees.  We go there in early summer to pick strawberries.  Mostly though, we go there to sketch because the small towns that run around its perimeter are full of sketchable subjects and because it’s “out in the country.”

At one of our gatherings Miram Blair came to sketch with us and she offered for us to come to her summer cottage on the island and since there aren’t many outdoor sketching days left in our year, I decided to contact her and arrange for us to descend upon her like sketchbook-carrying locusts.  She graciously agreed to host us.

As it turned out, only three of us could go but go we did, arriving about 10AM on a cold, blustery day.  As it turned out, Miriam doesn’t just have a cottage.  She has a huge barn and a bunch of land associated with her cottage and her cottage has a huge room that serves as kitchen, dining room, and studio.  It’s also a little slice of heaven.  No wonder Miriam is always in a good mood.

We decided to sketch outdoors first, in spite of the wind and the threat of rain.  We figured we could sketch until we got too cold and then head indoors to sketch the amazing stuff Miriam has hanging on her walls, sitting in window frames, and on cabinets in the large room.

I, being the consummate sissy, decided that I couldn’t sit in the wind so I took up a position just inside the door of the barn and drew this scene.  I’d taken a large folding chair with me because my back was still barking at me and, as it turned out, I was really comfortable and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I never really finished the sketch.  I just stopped when everyone went inside.

Stillman & Birn Beta (8x10), Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Brown, Zig brush pen

Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10), Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Brown, Zig brush pen

The brave folks, the ones who sat in the wind and drew the barn, were cold so we made our way into the house and for the rest of our time with Miriam, that’s where we stayed.  It was soooooooo much fun.

I spent a lot of time just looking at all the stuff Miriam has collected, mostly during local walks from the looks of the bird nests, shells, driftwood, etc. that graced her room.  She has two long tables, set end to end and a dozen beautiful wooden chairs lining their sides.  We used a few of them as we ate lunch, flipped through art books, and talked.

Eventually, though, we got back to drawing and I chose this scene.  When I started I wasn’t sure how successful I could be with it but I sure had fun doing it.  It’s a very different kind of drawing than my typical building sketches as I had to do a bunch of visual planning to get the bottles in the right places.  In the end, though, I was really happy with it as it captured the spirit that is Miriam’s place.

Stillman & Birn Beta (8x10), Platinum 3776

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

Stillman & Birn (4x6), Duke 209, DeAtramentis Document Black

Stillman & Birn Alpha (3.5×5.5), Duke 209, DeAtramentis Document Black

Miriam has a small dog named Nicki.  He and I became friends and he sat with me while I did my first sketch and because I gave him a bite of my sandwich 🙂  But as we were packing up to leave, Nicki was laying on the floor and in spite of three sketchers who were all around him as we packed up our gear, he wouldn’t budge.  I grabbed my small sketchbook and did this quick sketch of him.  It was a great end to a perfect day.