Urban sketching - a street act
- Vol.88(4), Apr
- Mumbai Arihant Publications 2023
- 102-107p.
Urban sketching, the art of capturing everyday life in our surroundings, is like a street act, but a little less dramatic. You scout the location, take a few pictures, look for shade, and hope you are not in the way of a vehicle that could knock you over. Then you pull out your sketchbook to draw, occasionally making small talk with the street vendor, who at first tries to look over your shoulder and then graciously allows you to set up the full drawing kit the moment he realises that you are about to draw, paint, and depict his view of the world around him! My sketches, as you see here, are pen and ink sketches finished with watercolours. It allows me to have black and white sketches, like an all-white architectural study model, that I can look at to see the story that the sketch could represent for a place. The colours then add layers to help enhance the drama—not only as a finished sketch as you see here, but in the very act of using watercolours as a medium that flows and blends into one another as I paint through the black lines.