Oliver on the Island

I loved the two sessions I did with urban sketcher guru, Oliver Hoesser in Vancouver on Granville Island. The sessions helped clarify some uncertainties and questions I had about ‘what is urban sketching?’ and he imparted great strategies to help with composition. Here is part two of what the stand outs were for me:

Part Two

3. Fusing elements. Part of Contour lines of objects needs to be open so that they can be merged together. Oliver showed an example of two buildings that he drew merged together, making it look like it is one building at first glance.

4.  Feel free to vary size relationships to create a more interesting picture. He showed an example from his sketch book, where an expressive, angry looking Italian statue was drawn much bigger than the domed buildings behind it. It was very effective.

I drew a tiny toy dinosaur much bigger than it was in reality and made the water bottle smaller than the dinosaur, which I can assure you, this was not the case. The picture is nothing to write home about, and was drawn in 3 minutes, but adding the square border around it, really helped make it pop. I quite like it now, which brings me to the number 5 take away.

5.  Try to have three sides of a picture touching an edge of the page or draw a line around it, as I did above.  Also, try to have an empty area where not much is happening to create a resting space for the eyes.

6. Translate sounds into words

The class took place in the Opus Art Supplies store.  This is another contour drawing that I did and while I was drawing Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ song was in the background. I thought I could draw speech bubbles for some of the brushes “I am the one”.

7. Use a grey texta for shadows

I haven’t used big grey felt pens before and loved it. I think it has terrific potential for urban sketching Australian buildings and putting in shadows under verandas and iron lace. I think it will be easier to mark out shadows with felt pen, rather than paint and you can paint over the grey.

8. Put darkest dark against the lightest light rule was also re-visited.

9. Light bulb moment I knew this one but I still felt a little uneasy, or that I wasn’t doing “true urban sketching”, when I wasn’t doing the painting part of the picture on site too.  Oliver said that he draws on site but paints his pictures at home. To hear this feels liberating!

My unfinished urban sketch of some of signs and sculptures I saw at Granville Island

Large sculpture at Granville Island, Vancouver

Thanks Oliver, for the great classes about urban sketching!