Sketching En Route

 

The nice thing about being an urban sketcher is always having something to do.  If you have to wait for two hours on a flight or at a gate and forgot to bring something to read,  you can always sketch.  I use that opportunity to practice drawing people.  That is definitely my weak area in sketching. Or I try a new medium, in the above sketch I used the waterbrush which I hadn't used in a while.

The following sketches were done on my way back to Seattle from the Oakland Airport to home.

By the way, I was proud to use public transportation on both ends from Seattle to Oakland.  I used the Sound Transit Link Light Rail to get from Seattle to Seatac Airport for only $3.25.  From Oakland Airport  I took the shuttle to the BART Coliseum Station then caught BART to Fremont, CA for $9.65.  I did the opposite on my way home.  This allowed my family to just pick me up at the local BART or Sound Transit Station.  

Yay to public transportation.  Avoid the traffic!

Gate 28 South West Airlines we ended up moving to Gate 32

Waiting for our flight at Gate 32

Flight from Oakland to Seatac

Light Rail from Seatac Airport to Seattle.

Loosening Up the Sketch

The second sketch I did at  Stanford was of the Rodin Gardens at the Cantor Museum.  Did you know that there are many Rodin statues in the garden as well as on campus?  I had no clue.
I had very little time.  Maybe about 20 minutes and I wanted to work loose so I did this quick sketch using a brush pen and adding color with a water brush and painted over it.

It is nice to mix up techniques and approaches to sketching.

Value Adjustment

Last week I had a chance to sketch in California with sketcher friends Suhita Shirodkar and Laurie Wigham.  We all met up at the Stanford University Campus and sketched the Memorial church.

I was sitting in front of  an arcade looking towards the church.  The structure of the arcade was in shade and the church facade was also on the shade side but brighter than the arcade.  In real life we can see with clarity and much more brightness things that are in shade.  However when you take a photo of that same image the areas of shade appear darker.  And to create depth in a picture you also have to adjust or exaggerate values. 

Here are the two images of the view I sketched the first was painted on site using the values of the arcade as I saw it from where I was sitting.  The blue sky seems to have the same value as the arcade and everything looks flat. What is separating the shapes is not value as much as color.

This second scan was after I added another layer of color to the arcade.  This created more depth and makes the church and the sky appear brighter and in the sun.