Catching Up ...

I've been very busy, and doing a fair amount of sketching .... but I haven't been posting enough. So I have a backlog of drawings that I want to get up on the blog and Flickr. The next several posts will probably come fast and furious, with not a whole lot of storytelling to go along with the images.

These sketches were done in the early days of the program, during the sketching course I teach. The goal was to show students how to keep their drawings quick, small, and manageable. Each of these is just a few inches by a few inches, and only about 5 or 10 minutes. (Derwent Venetian Red pencil.)

Much more to come very soon ...

Sketching Gear

Here is my sketching kit at the moment ... I have a few drawers of materials in my office, but this is what I'm currently traveling with for a summer in Rome. For pencils, I'm carrying three Staedtler-Mars (B, 2B, and 4B), a Derwent Venetian Red, a Derwent Chocolate, and a General's Medium Charcoal ... and a pencil-extender one of my teachers gave me a very long time ago. I also have a kneaded eraser for basic cleanup - as a rule, I never erase any lines, so this is just for accidental smudges - and a Mars plastic eraser for major accidents, like if a pigeon should happen to dump on my sketch. A small General's sharpener has been working fine, but I need to replace my little pocket knife - it was confiscated by TSA as I was on my way to Rome a couple years back, and I just haven't found a new one yet. For pens, I have a Uniball Vision Exact Micro (although I haven't been using it very often), a Lamy Safari with an extra fine nib, and an old Yafa fountain pen my dad gave me many years ago. I like the Lamy because it's so rough-and-tumble, but the Yafa is easier to draw with - it feels softer and much more fluid. Noodler's Lexington Gray ink is in both fountain pens. I had searched far and wide for a dark brown (sepia) ink that wouldn't bleed when adding watercolor to a sketch ... but no such luck. So I followed Nina Johansson's lead and went with the Lexington, and I like it very much - thanks, Nina! My watercolor palette is the same one I bought as a student about 25 years ago - a good, solid, hinged enameled-metal one, with a removable plastic piece that has the wells (makes it very easy to clean, and I like a clean palette!). My colors are all from M.Graham, and I really can't recommend them highly enough. The specific colors are, top-to-bottom on the palette, in some cases with two colors in the same well: Sepia, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Gamboge, Cadmium Yellow Light, Hooker's Green, Viridian, Prussian Blue, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Alizarin Crimson, Quinacridone Rose, and Cadmium Red. Finally, my brushes ... I use a Koi waterbrush for small, on-the-go subjects, and one of two other brushes for larger watercolors, and for when I have more time. The red-handled one is a Princeton synthetic sable #6 round, and the clear-handled one is a Connoisseur Kolinsky sable #6 round (this is my favorite brush). Not pictured here is a small brass water reservoir that clips to my sketchpad when I'm not using the waterbrush. Also not pictured here are the paper towels essential for watercolors and the pencil case I use to carry all this stuff around. Portability is the prime limiting factor ... I have to be selective to get it all in the case, and being selective is good!

Quick Sketches

Here are a few quick sketches from last week - I have a slight backlog and I'm trying to catch up. Even though I've been trying to simplify things and move to just a single sketchbook ... well, that hasn't happened. The dinner sketches I recently posted were from my relatively new Handbook - which was the intended 'single sketchbook.' But the sketches in this post are from the Moleskine (5" x 8" watercolor). And I'm also using 9" x 12" pads of drawing paper and watercolor paper for larger drawings (will post some of those soon). So if anything I've just added to the confusion by adding the Handbook. Well, it's not really confusion. It's just a hassle sometimes to tote all this stuff around ... or, if I leave one of these books/pads at the apartment, then I always regret not having it with me. Not a big problem, I know, but these are the things that occupy the mind of a sketcher. The first one here, of the Piazza di Spagna, was another attempt at using watercolor as a sketch medium - i.e., not doing any sketching with pencil or pen and then watercolor, but just doing the sketch directly in watercolor. The second sketch, of a beautiful little space just off the Via Margutta, was done with a Derwent 'Chocolate' colored pencil (one of my students asked if it was made with real chocolate), and the last one - at the Villa Giulia - is the Lamy Safari, Lexington Gray ink, and watercolor. It was a nice day of touring with my students and sneaking in a few quick sketches along the way. I'm having good fun mixing it up with media over here!

Eating Alone in Rome

Since my family has yet to join me here in Rome, and since I haven't had the time (or made the time) to make myself dinner, I've been eating out on my own every couple of days. It can be lonely, and Italians often regard me as an oddity - I think it's uncommon for them to eat alone, and I must look a little sad sitting there by myself. But it's not so bad if I do a little sketching and writing in my journal before or after I devour the evening's pasta. The day's events, comments on the food, and assorted thoughts make up the writing ... and whatever happens to be in my view ends up as a sketch. For this reason, I usually try to grab a table with a view through the door, but that's not always possible.






I've been writing and drawing in this book, a Handbook Journal, with an old Yafa fountain pen, using Noodler's Lexington Gray ink ... and it would be nice if I could add a little watercolor, but that would make things a bit complicated at the restaurant table. So instead I've chosen to keep things simple and quick. This is a selection from a few of my favorite places here in Trastevere.

Roma

I arrived in Rome last Thursday evening, and almost all of my students were in town by the end of the day Saturday, ready to begin the fourth annual incarnation of the University of Idaho's Rome Architecture Program. On Sunday, we all went to the Pantheon for the Pentacost service, at the end of which the local firefighters dump rose petals down through the oculus at the peak of the dome. It's an incredible sight, and I spent most of the event shooting video that I'll need to edit later. After the fact, I did this sketch from memory, and as a sort of title page for this next chapter in my moleskine sketchbook.

Following the mass, we broke for lunch and then began an orientation tour around the center of town. This is a fairly casual and very random tour, where I attempt to lead the students into surprising urban situations - sudden vistas, curious spaces, hit-you-over-the-head Baroque moments. We talk about the history of the city, it's urban plan, it's monuments and personalities. We covered a lot of ground and the tour ended up going for about four hours, finishing at the Campidoglio, with its views over the Forum to the southeast and the Centro Storico to the north, where I did this quick sketch.

Getting to Rome

I arrived in Rome after the standard long flights and long layovers scenario. On one of the flights, I honestly can't recall which one, I started to work out a timeline that plotted Moscow time against Rome time, with time spent in the air (red) and time spent on the ground (green) on a bar down the center. Even after going through this little exercise, and creating what I thought would be a helpful graphic device, it was still a confusing process of travel. But I've been here almost a week now, and the trip over seems like a distant memory. Funny how time bends when you change so many time zones overnight.

SketchCrawl

I had way too much going on to plan/organize a sketchcrawl, as the semester is crashing to a close and I depart for Rome in just a few days. But one of my tasks before leaving was to do a sketch of our kids' elementary school as a gift for their principal, who is retiring this year. He's an amazing guy, and has helped our kids immensely, so this was really the least I could do. I hope he likes it! ... The next time I post will be from ROME.

Doodles

Ordinarily, I'm not a big fan of making mindless doodles. I prefer to draw from observation, and I enjoy the practice of trying to represent what I see in a variety of media. But sometimes I fall out of practice or get too busy and don't make enough time to get out and sketch. Too many meetings can also be the culprit, and that was the case with these sketches ... mindless doodling, with watercolor added later. In both cases, I just went through my watercolor palette one color at a time, with no mixing involved. So in a way, these are useful little images in that they describe my palette at this point in time. They were both drawn using a new ink I'm trying out - Lexington Gray (with a Lamy Safari EF). I've been trying, without any luck, to find a dark brown waterproof fountain pen ink, and noticed that Nina Johansson (a fellow Urban Sketcher) frequently uses Lexington Gray with watercolor.


So I ordered a sample from Pear Tree Pens (these folks have been exceptionally helpful) ... and so far I like it - not as dark or warm-toned as I'd prefer, but it is certainly waterproof, so it's a keeper for now. Both of these sketches were done in my relatively new Handbook, which I'm trying to use for lists, lecture notes, journaling, meeting notes, and sketches. It's a great little book, with watercolor-like paper, but in a portrait format (unlike the Moleskine watercolor books, which still seem to be available only in landscape format).
See? For better or worse, I don't think I'm capable of a truly 'mindless' doodle.

Conference Sketching

Going to academic conferences can be great fun and very inspiring. This past weekend, I attended the National Conference on the Beginning Design Student (NCBDS) in Charlotte, NC, and had a fantastic time. Met lots of interesting people, learned all sorts of new approaches to teaching, and enjoyed many good conversations. The only drawback with most conferences is that I'm more or less forced to be inside all day listening to presentations. So even when the conference is in an interesting place, and when the weather is spectacular (as it was over the weekend), it's rare that I get a chance to walk around, discover, and sketch the location. My sketchbooks end up being a mix of airport scenes, auditorium interiors, and the occasional sketch of an image from someone's presentation. As evidence, here are a couple spreads and a few details from other pages.

SketchCrawl - Moscow

A few sketches from today's 26th Worldwide SketchCrawl ... click the images for large size.




Friendship Square
















Hodgins Drugstore













Sister's Brew Coffeeshop