urban sketching: what to draw

On this urban sketching jag, one concern of mine has been running out of things to draw. Like, if I’m going on an outing, finding something neat to draw is (hopefully) easy. But what about the vast majority of days when I just step out my front door with sketchbook in hand?

Lately I’ve been watching sketchbook flipthroughs from Liz Steel, a dedicated art journaler. Her solution: Just draw the same thing. Every weekday morning she goes to get a coffee, then sits in a sunny spot in the village green to draw the view. She uses it to experiment with different media, coloring techniques, etc. She doesn’t have to worry if a picture turns out bad, because the view will still be there tomorrow and she can try something else.

(In fact, none of them turn out bad. At worst, they may be uninspired or “just there,” which is understandable for the same scene day after day, but they all look good and many of them look great.)

I really like her use of color. She’s a mixed media artist—pen, marker, crayon, colored pencil, watercolor—and a lot of her work is scribbly/loose/not fully blended in a way that livens up her pieces. A lot of energy, a lot of vibrancy. More colorful than real life. Is this cathedral salmon & cobalt in real life? I bet not! But it looks great!

(Maybe the colors are an exaggeration of real life, trying to capture the feeling of late afternoon sun and deepening shadows on the face of the building.)

(Or maybe she just felt like pink and blue that day. Who knows?)

The current sketchbook roster:

• Canson 9 x 12, hardcover spiralbound, 65 lb. My standard sketchbook for years. Chaos zone.
• Strathmore 6 x 8, spiralbound, 80 lb. On-the-go sketchbook. It’s not proper watercolor paper, but it’s sturdy enough to handle light watercolor washes.
• Canson Montval 5.5 x 8.5, spiralbound, 130 lb. Watercolor sketchbook.

Things I’ve sketched outside:

• Notable trees of the condo association, with commentary (2 pages)
• The defunct guardhouse at the entrance
• The house with the loud dog
• A house with pumpkins on display
• Bobby’s Body Shop
• Railroad workers’ trucks parked alongside the road (2)
• A train signal tower
• A leaf-strewn staircase leading up to the train platform
• The dropoff driveway at the coffeehouse
• Interior shots of the coffeehouse (2)

After all that talk, I didn’t go outside to sketch today. The plan was to head out at dinnertime to a burger place near the station (new place! human enrichment!) and draw either there or on the way. But it was raining. So instead I stayed home and made pasta for dinner, and I doodled a spiral and a Valheim portal in my sketchbook.