Urban Sketching at Flower City Arts
It's been far, far too long since I've done anything to formally further my education. So when Urban Sketching showed up a Flower City Arts, just a ten minute walk away, I dithered for just a short while before signing up.
Today was the first class. Who was there?
- E-, Our instructor, a German artist and printmaker, who professed some small astonishment about her success in the niche of fish illustration.
- A-, A mother of two young kids
- C-, A urban photographer who doesn't drive and arrived by running over
- E-, A veteran print-maker who's taken many classes at Flower City Arts.
- D-, A middle-aged woman planning a trip to Portugal
- C-, And me.
- ?-, our mysteriously absent sixth member
We started with some exercises.
- Draw your counterpart across the table, the pencil must stay on the page in one continuous line and no looking down.
- Take an 8x10 sheet of glass placed over a photograph. Draw with a dry erase with emphasis on finding shapes in the piece your drawing.
- Using cut out paper frames, focus on finding a pleasing composition in a 2D photo or in real life.
Then we moved on to some actual sketches.
Here's a place Gin and I biked to just last year. Notice the treestorm in the upper right.
A rural house with trees and boulders. I seem to have rendered the large rocks in the front of the house as odd little craters.
We ran out of time on the last one; doubtless it would have been even more awkward if we had more time.
My surprise was while I found it quite enjoyable to draw the buildings, it was the odds and ends that surround the architecture that I couldn't find technique for. Cars, trees, and cars and/or trees, or cars.
For next week homework, we're to draw two quick landscapes. And we're to bring in four photographs that others can use to find. We've spent the last several years doing research for exactly this moment.
