Pipa

Apparently May is the season for this delicious little fruit called pipa. I think the English translation is loquat. It is a small, easy to peel fruit that is like a juicy apricot and has dark, round shiny seeds a bit like in a persimmon. We saw this fruit everywhere for sale along the highways and in the towns but did not try it until we got to Hongcun village. And then we were hooked.

Pipa seller in Hongcun

This is the sketch I was working on when the pipa lady offered me her fruit. Eggplant was growing in the small plot beside me. Mops and laundry were drying in the sun.

Street sales in Suzhou

The Fabulous Bridge in Hongcun

This is the fantastic stone bridge that brings everyone across the small lake and into the village of Hongcun: tour groups in matching hats, grad classes in black gowns, women with striking red scarves brought especially for photo ops, young men taking shots of the backs of their girlfriends as they walked away from the bridge and school girls with selfie sticks. And of course, many of the art students tackled the complexity of the structure and the reflections in the water. This was the bridge and path that led past the front of the small hotel where we stayed and in to the maze of canal lined paths through the middle of the village. We could sit on our balcony and watch the comings and goings throughout the day. The tour guides led their tours past our window starting at 7:15 am.

Our hotel on the far side of the bridge.

Dinner on  the waterway, in front of the hotel.

China 2015 - Exhilarating

We are just back from three weeks in China, and I have to say, the trip was nothing short of exhilarating. Happily, I did lots of sketching, mostly in situ.  I will spend the next few days or even weeks posting from the trip. 

One of the real highlights from the trip was our time spent in Hongcun, Anhui Province. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site. (read more here http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1002) Apparently about 1000 people still live in the village, a rabbit warren of tiny, water channel lined stone footpaths between ancient two storey buildings and tiny yet productive vegetable plots. There are infinite possibilities for sketching and the cool thing is that the village is a magnet for art students from all over China. We met university students from Xian, Sichuan and Guangdong provinces, as well as from some local cities like Hefei. Literally hundreds of these students emerge in the mornings with sketchbooks, paints, easels and tiny stools to capture the beauty of the place until late in the afternoons. We had a great time sketching along side these students, sharing our work, looking at images on their cell phones and becoming Wechat buddies (a bit like a Chinese version of Facebook). 

Art students painting  Hongcun.

Old fellow drawing in my book.

The old fellow's 10 minute pencil sketch. 

At one point, an old fellow from the village came over to look at my sketchbook. He seemed really interested, took my book in his hands and flipped through the pages. I was a little nervous, wondering if he might walk away with it. I have had people ask me for pages from my book or even if they could have the whole thing. Instead, he picked up a pencil and started drawing the scene. Turns out, he is a bit of a local celebrity and can certainly draw!

Painting set up on my tiny borrowed folding stool. 

The inspiration 

Out and About on Location

If you are going to urban sketch, you have to get out of your own house. So I went into the backyard, and then on Vancouver Urban Sketchers meet up down at the Vancouver Museum. I chose to wander down to the Maritime Museum instead, to check out the St Roch.

In both of these sketches, I worked very slowly, using the grid and I had to force myself to keep going, keep looking and then suddenly, whoosh. The sketch revealed itself to me. Thrilling in a nerdy way.

Teapots, Paints and Boots

Turns out the grid works pretty well with close up subjects too. It is great for figuring out weird perspectives. Here are my beloved teapots and Erica's beloved boots with the purple yarn for laces.
Oh and my watercolour paint and ink set up.

Upon Reflections and the Wunder Grid

One of the things I enjoyed most about Liz Steel's online course, Sketching Foundations, was that she really encouraged people to look at their own work and reflect. Many people chose to post their work to the Flikr group, an option I resisted, knowing that I would spend way too much time looking at other people's work and comments. I wanted to spend my time drawing and painting. None the less, Liz gave feedback on each of the 12 lessons based on the work she saw posted by her students, so I was able to benefit from her general comments and more importantly, reflect on and apply the comments to my own work.

As much as I believe that everyone has to develop her or his own style, I do think that, without some reflection, it is very easy to keep doing things the same way, making the same "mistakes" and not really progressing much. So looking at my own work, I could see that I often chose organic subjects at close range that could look wonderful even if they were drawn and painted inaccurately. I love a flowy, spontaneous look with splashes of watercolour. All good.

I also noticed that I usually avoided scenes where any complicated or accurate perspective was involved. I  know that a big part of my motivation for drawing and painting is to record things as I travel. I want to be able to urban sketch and paint on location, either at home or on the road. I know in my head, that learning to see as an artist, in a visual or graphic way is important but I have often felt that I really struggled when I look at a complex scene and try to figure out how it all goes together.

All this to say that Liz's lessons on using a variety of tools and methods to quickly (or slowly) set up a sketch, proved to be revolutionary for me. And I don't say that lightly. Using watercolour pencil set up lines, measuring by squinting and holding out the stereotypical pencil to the scene and most importantly looking through a clear plastic grid has set me on the path to much improved perspective. I can honestly say, I feel like I can draw anything now.

So let's be real here. Setting up a grid in my sketchbook and looking through a plastic grid at a scene is very slow and, at times, torturous. I literally look at the scene, down at my book, back at the scene and so on for minutes on end.  I truly feel like I am reteaching myself to see, as it relates to lines on a page. As slow as the set up is, I reach a point where the watercolour pencil sketch literally reveals itself to me and I put the grid down, draw with  my ink fountain pen and very quickly get to the part I love most, the colour. Once the hard work of the set up is done, the ink and colour are just a gas! The other lovely side effect of the grid is that it is a great tool to help with composition and framing. Bonus.

I have to admit that my sketches are a wee bit on the tight side, but I am not worried at all. Once I get better at the set up, I have every confidence that I will get faster, more fluid and freer. But for now, I'm so loving the feeling of being able to look at any scene and feel like I can have a go.

So here are the latest works. Thanks Liz Steel!
http://www.lizsteel.com

Kitchen in Watercolour

Living Room

Living Room in Coloured Pencil

Where've Ya Been, Girl?

Well, to be honest, I've been abstracting shapes, feeling edges and trying to teach myself to see as an illustrator. In short, I've been taking Liz Steel's online Sketching Foundations course, from Australia no less. As a TVless, flip phone toting luddite, I have to say I love the internet. Instant connection with cool people doing and teaching fabulous things all around the world.

So here are a few examples of Liz's lessons on abstracting shapes and feeling edges. These were done on fairly crumby paper so the watercolour did not take too well. The idea was to look at still life items in terms of seeing shapes,  relationships of shapes  and spaces between shapes rather than seeing recognizable objects.