Getting into the sketching

I’ve been visiting the Urban Sketchers site a lot lately, simply because I really like the whole style of drawing and painting.

There is something really energetic and lively about a quick pen stroke, which I think can end up looking even better than a carefully selected one.

So, in my last post, I thought I would have a go at the whole sketch style myself, and drew up a kind of suburban, worn-down street.

I wanted to have a lot of grass, some old houses, a ruff road and some telephone poles, which I ended up painting a lot of birds on (I really love drawing telephone poles with birds on now!).

So I just went about it, really. Choosing my perspective and letting the pen do the work. For the drawing I used a 0,1mm Pigma Micron, before adding Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor paint. Like this:

Bird street1

I was quite happy with it actually, and it was so much fun making them that I decided to have a go at another one right away. It ended up looking really similar, but with some improvements, I think:

I also tried painting the hospital in the town where I live (my first ever real life sketch!), and found that having to deal with real life shapes and sizes, instead of just making them up in your head, are quite a bit more challenging.

But, this is how my sketch of Sykehuset Levanger ended up: