Day 5 of the One Week 100 People 2017 Challenge

For my last day of the One Week 100 People 2017 Challenge, I started with a portrait inspired by the Sktchy app in gouache.

No. 80 - a Sktchy-inspired portrait in gouache

Then, it was off to the tennis tournament - where I sketched a lot of the players and ended up reaching my 100 by sketching the crowd watching the tennis in front of me.

Nos. 81 & 82 - Rafa Nadal & Caroline Wozniacki practicing

Nos. 83 & 84 - Rafa Nadal and Marin Cilic practicing their serves

Nos. 85 & 86 - Jo-Wilfred Tsonga and David Goffin practicing

Nos. 87 - 89 - Todd watching, Kevin Anderson, and a security guard

Nos. 90 & 91 - Kayla Day & Mariana Lucic-Baroni

And I made it to 100 people in 5 days! It was a great challenge that really made me focus on drawing people from life - and from photo references. I thoroughly enjoyed the practice and can't wait to do it again next year! How did the challenge go for you? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Day 4 of the One Week 100 People 2017 Challenge

Continuing this challenge is easier while at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament in Indian Wells - there are so many people everywhere to sketch!

I started the day at the practice courts watching one of my tennis idols, Venus Williams. I sketched her in brush pen and watercolors - though, I admit that I did not get her likeness. Also, I now realized that I messed up my numbering and overlapped nos. 54 - 56! Oh, well - I can always use the extra practice.

Nos. 55 & 56 - Karolina Pliskova and her coach on the practice courts

Nos. 57 & 58 - Feliciano Lopez practicing and Bjorn Fratangelo playing Tomic

No. 59 - Bernard Tomic playing Bjorn Fratangelo

Nos. 62 - 74 - Reilly Opelka and the crowd

Nos. 75 - 77 - Barbora Strycova, Sania Mirza, and Jelena Ostapenko

Nos. 78 & 79 - Eugenie Bouchard & Annika Beck

I didn't quite make it to my 80th person on Day 3 - but I started a Sktchy-inspired gouache portrait that I will finish on Day 4. Stay tuned! I would love to hear your comments on my sketches and yours for this challenge!

A New Art Challenge - #OneWeek100People2017

Two of my favorite online urban sketchers and art instructors, Liz Steel and Marc Holmes, recently decided to start a new art challenge - drawing 100 people in one week (really, in 5 days). As Marc puts it:

So – what is this #OneWeek100People2017 all about?

Is it a race? A stunt? A kind of monastic self-flagellation? Or just an excuse to get out and have fun drawing?

Well, why not all of the above!

I love a new art challenge - anything to make me accountable for turning out more art and practicing my skills - like capturing lots and lots of people. So, yesterday, March 6th, I went out to a cafe to start the challenge.

I went to my favorite local cafe, The Coffee Shop, and intended to draw with my Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pen and/or sketch with my watercolor Pocket Palette 20 people before I would go home. This took me longer than I thought it would - about 2 hours, but I'm pleased with the results.

Nos. 1 - 10 across a 2 page spread of my 7" x 7"  watercolor sketchbook — Nos. 1 - 10 across a 2 page spread of my 7" x 7" watercolor sketchbook

For no. 20, I decided to take more time to do a Sktchy-inspired portrait in gouache

Today, I plan to take a trip to my local library to get my 20 people done. What about you? Have you decided to take the plunge and join in? I'm hoping my quick capture skills will improve over the week. We are going to see the BNP Paribas Indian Wells tennis event on Thursday and Friday of this week - so, expect to see a lot of tennis spectators in my sketches soon!

Inktober Completed!!!

I am happy to say that I finished participating in Inktober 2016 today! I interpreted the restrictions of Inktober loosely and couldn't refrain from using watercolor on several entries, but I do feel like I got a lot of good practice in hatching and using ink washes as well as just committing to drawing in ink (which I normally do though).

Here are all of my drawings for the month.

Did you participate in Inktober this year? If so, what did you think of it? If not, will you join next year? I'd love to hear your comments!

Inktober Sketching

Inktober continues and I've been pretty good with keeping up and using the prompts for each day. Here are my latest Inktober sketches.

Day 25 - Box (actually, Box is supposed to be day 26!)

More Inktober Sketches

I've been really good about doing an ink drawing for each day of Inktober so far! In fact, I've used the Inktober prompts more than I thought I would. Here they are, if you haven't seen them yet.

I thought it would be hard enough to just get an ink drawing done each day, but I am finding that using the prompts has helped me to stay inspired. Usually, I just search Sktchy and my Sktchy queue for photos that correspond to the prompts. I also love seeing how other artists are interpreting the prompts!

Here are my latest Inktober entries:

Have you been participating in Inktober this year? If so, are you using the prompts? I can't seem to limit myself to just using ink, but I have tried to for the most part. Sometimes, I can't keep myself from adding watercolor though. And, I've decided to not stress it and just keep trying to participate in Inktober!

The 50 Day Project Continues (#21 - 41)

I've been neglecting to post updates to my 50 day project of 50 figures in 50 days lately. Here are my entries from nos. 21 - 41. I'm almost done!

Quick trip to the coast

We love staying at Steep Ravine - a coastal area near Stinson Beach that is part of California's Mount Tamalpais State Park. Steep Ravine is so wonderful that you need to book either the campsites or the cabins six months prior to your stay and at exactly 8am PT on the first of the month.

We were lucky enough to reserve a cabin for Monday to Wednesday this week and pulled the kids out of school for the trip. Even though we left Tuesday night so the girls could go to school all day on Wednesday, I still got a lot of sketching in. Here are my finished sketches from the trip.

Chloe and Todd built this wooden shelter on the beach

The beach with sun rays peaking out from the clouds

Our view of the cabins in front of cabin #5

Jade reading in her bed in the main cabin room

A hermit crab with a beautiful iridescent shell

Learning from Cathy Johnson

After taking Cathy Johnson's Sketchbook Skool Seeing klass, I picked up a couple of Cathy Johnson's books from the library: Creating Nature in Watercolor an Artist's Guide and Watercolor Pencil Magic. I loved both of these books so much, I purchased Cathy Johnson's Artist's Sketchbook - Exercises and Techniques for Sketching on the Spot from Amazon.

I can't recommend these books more. Cathy is so inspirational and shows that there are an infinite subjects to sketch! Here are some of my recent sketches inspired by Cathy's teachings.

Trailing lantana from my yard and fountain grass from a Broadway Plaza

A recently purchased air plant in watercolor and ink

#11 - 20 of the 50 Day Project

I am really enjoying my latest project. Drawing people from a distance is surprisingly difficult. I'm finding that I need to be very purposeful with every mark as so few marks are used to convey a person from a distance. Here are my latest entries for my 50 day project of 50 figures in 50 days.

What do you think are the challenges of portraying figures as opposed to portraits or other subjects?

Portraits 93 - 97 for the 100 Day Project

Here are my most recent portraits.

Portrait 95/100 (wrong no. on the artwork!)

Portrait 96/100 (wrong no. on the artwork!)

2 Very Different Urban Sketches

This morning, I had several hours in Point Richmond while waiting for my daughter's class to end. Since I wasn't able to do a detailed interior sketch yesterday at Tender Greens, I decided to make that a priority today and went to Kaleidoscope Coffee.

This independent cafe is a major improvement over the Starbucks up the road! Here were my choices for possible views to draw.

Looking from the back towards the front of the cafe

So many great choices! I ended up choosing the view looking towards the back as I had already unpacked a lot of my art supplies on a table in the window in the front (if I finished quickly, I could sketch my view outside the window). Also, this view captures the great kaleidoscope-like artwork on the wall and ceiling.

I practiced using Steven Reddy's techniques from his Craftsy class, Sketching Interiors: Structure, Detail & Play. First, you need to consider several vantage points from which to sketch, then, make a thumbnail compositional sketch - identifying the foreground, middle ground, and background. Next, you block in the major shapes of your sketch in pencil and then, do a contour drawing of all the tangible edges in your sketch. After that, you apply a series of ink washes (1) a 25% India ink solution over all areas that are not white in your sketch, (2) a second application of the 25% solution over areas that you wish to darken from your first pass, (3) a final application of a 75% India ink solution on the darkest areas of your sketch.

Here is my sketch after following all of the above steps:

Steven often stops at this stage, but I continued with his two final steps: (1) adding a limited palette of watercolor glazes (which I added to because I don't really like the limited palette effect), and (2) adding hatching for darkest and texture. Here is my final version.

Final version with watercolor and hatching added.

I had about 15 minutes left before I needed to pick up Chloe, so I went outside and did a quick urban sketch using my waterproof Kuretake sable brush pen and my watercolors. This took me about 20 minutes from start to finish and yes, the girls complained when I picked them up 10 minutes late!

Grizzly Peak Landscape Sketches

I am really enjoying Shari Blauskopf's Craftsy course on Sketching Landscapes. I went out today to Grizzly Peak in Berkeley to sketch the amazing views from up there. I suspect it's my small brushes (small squirrel mop and size 10 Kolinsky sable) are to blame for my skies not coming out quite right (too many blooms), but I will be getting an Escoda Versatil size 16 and a Rosemary & Co. squirrel mop in size 6 in the next few days. I will tell you if they make a big difference when I get them.

My second sketch in a slightly different location

Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated!!