‘Exmouth Sketching Demo’

I had a very enjoyable evening last night with the Exmouth Art Group, giving them a talk and several demo’s about ‘sketching’. I tried to fit as many of my sketching techniques as I could into the time allowed. So I was working very quickly with not much time to think about what I was doing. Which are good practice and something I haven’t done much of lately. Note to self – need to do more!

Firstly I started with a sketch from a photo of Ben Alder bothy, in its mountainous setting. Using watercolour washes. Then working into the still wet washes with a black, watercolour pencil. Allowing it to merge into the wet paper. The sketch took about 10 minutes and was A4.

The next was a quick pencil portrait sketch of a member of the audience. This one took about 15 minutes.

A ‘scribbly’ figure sketch came next with watercolour washes over the top. So making sure that the pen had waterproof ink and was not going to bleed into the washes. Roughly taking 20 minutes.

Lastly came a lighthouse watercolour sketch. Obviously, I had to work from a photo to do this, something that I prefer not to do when sketching. Working quickly with the washes some of them bled into one another. Usually working outside there is more breeze to help dry the washes. I am also often having my lunch whilst sketching, so a bite of a ​sandwich while washes dry is always good. Again this took me about 20 minutes, though I rather ran out of time on this one and would have preferred to take a little longer over it.

All in all an enjoyable evening and it was great to catch up with the Exmouth Art Group again.

Also check out my sketching tips post.