Ahead of a little holiday in Barcelona, and thinking about how I’ll make the most of this for my painting in between family time and sight seeing etc, I had a bit of realisation. While I think my painting has come on leaps and bounds over the past year, my sketching… well I don’t really think I’ve made much progress on that front at all.
I know from the experience of previous vacations that I won’t have the time to do much painting whilst I’m away, so I’ve set myself the challenge of doing some more sketchbook based work. I’ve packed an appropriate little sketching kit (and am particularly excited about using my Frazer Price palette box, but thought that I’d try to do a ‘practice run’ in the safety of home. I had a view in mind that is very near to another view that I’ve already painted before near Notre Dame. This view however is looking in the opposite direction to Notre-Dame, towards what I think is the Hotel De Ville (but if anyone with a better knowledge of Paris can confirm or correct this, I’d be really grateful!)
I thought this would be a good challenge because of its complexity – that the need to simplify it would be a good exercise. I decided that I’d start by doing a much more detailed, but infinitely looser pencil sketch than I usually start with. My plan was to do more of a tinted sketch than a painting. I endeavoured to sketch this out quickly, not to erase any pencil marks or errors, and to try to keep the pencil in contact with the paper as much as possible – almost as a continuous line – and to spend much more time looking at my reference photo than the paper I was sketching on to. Now it’s not exactly sketchbook work, as this is a half imperial sized painting, but it’s only playing around. I should have taken a photo after I’d drawn it out as I really liked the sketch even though it was all over the place. Once I started to lay over some washes though, I immediately began to lose a lot of the underdrawing. This was completed in a couple of washes with the addition of some more detailed ‘jewellery’ just to finish it off. If you look closely, you can still see a lot of the pencil work beneath.
These two sketches have left me feeling really excited at the prospect of carrying some of this approach into smaller sketches and studies while we’re away.
4 thoughts on “Sketching practice”
This is so beautiful! I’ve never been much of a painter, but this makes me want to start trying more. I look forward to seeing your new and past creations.
Although the view does indeed look similar to the Hotel de Ville, if this is the view behind the Cathédrale de Notre Dame, I’m pretty sure it’s the Préfecture de Police and the Hôtel Dieu de Paris (the oldest hospital in Paris! according to Wikipedia). The Hôtel de Ville is located across the river, a little to the north!
Hi Aya and thanks so much for this and for following my adventures, I really appreciate your kind and generous comments. Thanks too for the navigation pointers on that Paris painting – I can tell that I’m going to have to revisit this on google maps! Funnily enough, I was at an art fair yesterday where I was exhibiting a view of the Paris bridge, ‘Le Pont Alexandre III’ and I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was at either end of that bridge! (It also seems remarkably co-incidental that you’re based in California and at the same art fair yesterday, I sold a painting entitled ‘Red Blankets, Paris’ to a lovely family from California who were on a little European tour!)
Haha that’s great! I love remarkable coincidences!
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