Getting Drama into our Sketches
We hear this question quite a lot. How do I get a bit of drama into this!
Students will say ‘The colours all look the same’ or ‘What’s missing here’. or ‘It’s not looking interesting’ and so on.
This week’s subjects as always were wide and varied but always it comes down to ‘Where’s your focus, what’s the most important part of your sketch.
Composition is vital. If you don’t get that right, colour won’t fix it.
What’s your main subject? How much do we want to put in? We don’t need the story of the world here - just the bit that’s most interesting.
It’s worth taking the time to do a planning sketch first. Seriously. How do you know where all the shapes and forms will be if you just launch in? It might take you 10minutes to observe your subject and decide whether it’s to be portrait or landscape. Try it out on your planning page. You might surprise yourself.
That’s 10 minutes you won’t spend correcting your main sketch.
Now we look at framing our sketch, using trees, branches, leaves, flowers. Look at what’s around you and use what you see.
For instance we have the fascinating Pandanus palm in northern NSW/Queensland, but in Sydney you have the fabulous Morton Bay figs. Make your foliage typical of where you are.
What about foreground? That’s where we can add a dog, a bird, some dropped leaves, a couple of figures - whatever tickles your fancy. You can make up stuff you know. Have a bit of fun with it. You can get your pops of colour in here. Don’t forget that dash of red.
Be sure that if you have pathways leading us in, they are narrow as they go away. Wider in front of you.
Let’s talk about how our classes approached all this.
Mosman. Last class of their 6 series and a big subject to finish with. (New courses start for all of us first week of February 2021.)
The Sydney Opera House is pretty much up there with the Eiffel Tower, and actually trickier to do. This class did a great job by going to the Royal Botanic Gardens and getting a view from the side, with the Harbour bridge behind. Well done everyone with the bridge framing the Op House, branches framing above that, and some interest in the foreground. Your purple inside the arches of the Op House takes us straight there. Terrific.
Gold Coast. A big day this! The ‘P’ day. People and Perspective. Nobody ended up in tears.
We started with a page of scattered people and connected them with colour. Vignettes we call that. We learned to put random figures you’ve observed anywhere on the page and each one is a story.
We followed our perspective graph based on eye level then outside to sketch a block shaped office building which worked rather well.
We kept our whites and pales to the top and sides, and brought more colour to the centre. We always bring more colour to the centre. Great results.
Kingscliff. We were at the tiny town of Condong! Yes I know. Not the most salubrious name for a town but there you go. We met opposite the massive old Sugar Factory, in the cafe called Stamp & Grind. An utterly delightful Cafe, General store and Post Office run by the enthusiastic new owners, Karen and Geoff.
In the enormous 3 chimneyed sugar processing factory over the road, they turn sugar cane, which is the main crop as far as your eye can see round here - into all these sugar products we all love. Or not! They stop soon it seems. The factory processes for 6 months of the year when harvest time is on, which is just finishing now.
What a great building to sketch - but we didn’t! I gave that to one of the more senior students. Mmm kept him very busy and although we didn’t get it photographed, I’m sure he’ll post it soon. It’s now below in the images.
We instead were also on eye level perspective. Starting with our graph of course and then round the other side of the original General store to take a look at the heritage sheds sitting there.
Lots of thinking went on and with a few lines corrected, the results were great. Toss a bit of colour on and you’re done. Fun. Note various creatures, birds appearing in the foreground.
Moss Vale ( soon to move to Bundanoon) People, perspective, salted caramel muffins and liquorice allsorts. All very good subjects to master. Keeping the whites and pales to the top and sides and more colour to the centre works for all these sketches.
Tree lined driveways are excellent for training the eye to see where the focus is. Larger trees and shrubs in the front can have more colour and get softer as they go away. An excellent one to practice when ever you see a road or pathway meandering ahead of you. Stop and sketch it. Add a bush turkey, ibis, donkey or whatever at the end of it. You’ll enjoy the fun in it.
Food sketching is always a lot of fun. Lovely compositions and use of colour. And you can eat it at the end. Yum.
On to see the work from this week……