Urban Sketching using Marc Taro Holmes's Techniques

I have been loving Marc Taro Holmes's Craftsy classes, Sketching People in Motion and Travel Sketching in Mixed Media. I love how he understands the constraints of urban sketching - especially when people are moving, you're on vacation and your family wants to keep moving, etc. To sketch people in motion, Marc teaches us how to capture gestures quickly with pencil and then move onto fountain pens, brush pens, and watercolors. In terms of travel sketching, Marc teaches us to do single line drawings, then 5-7 line drawings (cinq à sept), use shading and brush pens, watercolors, and eventually, watercolors alone.

I recently practiced these techniques in my hometown, Walnut Creek.

Liberty Bell Plaza -- Main St. & Mt. Diablo Blvd. — Liberty Bell Plaza -- Main St. & Mt. Diablo Blvd.

And practiced these urban sketching techniques using photographs from Sktchy.

I followed Marc's demonstration using watercolors only

I practiced sketching people in motion at Chloe's gymnastic show.

Sktchy's WAXHandy Challenge

Sktchy is a fun and inspiring app for artists and people who want to inspire artists. Each weekend, Sktchy has a themed Weekend Art Extravaganza (#WAX). This past weekend, it was #WAXhandy and the challenge was to make art featuring hands. Here are my contributions.

The funny thing is that I was recently explaining my 100 day portrait project to someone in my figure drawing group and how I undertook it to improve a weakness I felt I had with portraits. I was saying that I have such trouble with drawing hands that I was telling her that I should do a 100 day project with hands and feet! I don't know if I can do 100 of those, but drawing hands for this weekend was challenging and fun!

What is your experience with drawing hands and feet? Do you relish the challenge or find it easy?

Trip to Monterey in Comic Form

In Danny Gregory's Sketchbook Skool Polishing klass, he taught us to document our days in comic form. He said that the point is not really any one individual daily comic, but the accumulation of the days over time. I tried to do that, but realized that my daily activities are pretty routine and repeatable, and, frankly, not very exciting to motivate me to do it. But, on a recent trip to Monterey, Carmel, and Pacific Grove with friends, I found the idea of a daily comic as a usual and fun way to document and remember the activities we enjoyed and shared together. Here are my comics from that three day trip.

Trip to Monterey

This weekend, I took a trip to Monterey, Carmel, and Pacific Grove with my friends, Julie and Sharon. I had a lot of fun introducing them to the Sktchy app and drawing them!

I drew this at lunch at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had an awesome table with this lovely view.