9 December, 2018. Gesture sketching is fun, fast, and immediate. They work or they suck. Period. When they work, things feel great. Lines just seem to lay down on the page in exactly the right way, exactly the right place.
And when they don’t work… well, those pages never see the light of day ever again.
I think gesture sketches are a way of learning, of studying the world around you. They’re a kind of shorthand.
7 December, 2018. The trumpet player is one in a quartet of jazz musicians. He’s heavyset and lounging in his chair; I worry that it’s going to break because it seems to bend under his weight and audibly creaks when he rocks back and forth. He leads the group with a version of Saint Louis Blues and while no one would mistake his horn playing for Louis Armstrong there’s something else. When he sings, his voice sounds a lot like Pops.
Our server asks if she can show him my sketch and I nod. When the band breaks, he grabs a plate of food and comes over to chat. “Ah, an artist,” he says. I pat him on the arm and correct him: “No, there are two artists here,” nodding at him. He grins and waddles off, horn in hand to play another set.
If you’re not in New Orleans to listen to jazz, you’re missing out. It’s everywhere. At breakfast in a French Quarter place called Buffa’s, a group of elderly musicians are jamming. The trumpet and trombone players are both women, and their horns are smoking as they hammer out standard after standard, filling every bridge with improvisational solos.
It’s not unusual to encounter street musicians or small marching bands or just some guy sitting in an empty area playing his horn, presumably to warm up his chops. In Louis Armstrong Park, a lone trombonist is pacing behind a cluster of buildings, wailing away as he tried out different variations.
Banjos are so much a part of the Bluegrass music scene that it’s easy to forget they are also solidly at home in traditional jazz.
Musicians lean back or lean over and get completely lost in their sounds. They are the very essence of cool.
And on the street, waiting for a customer, the shoe shine man is singing Scat.
4 May, 2018. I thought I’d share a few of the really quick street sketches I made a couple of days ago. Sketching people on the move is challenging and fun. People walk past and seldom hold anything resembling a pose, musician move and sway, shoppers flit from one market stall to the next. It forces me to hold their likeness in the back of my mind and, often, to sort of “collage” a couple of passers by together into a single sketch.
The concept of a sketch as “collage” holds true even when my subjects are thoughtful enough to stick around for a few extra seconds. As I finish one person, another enters my line of sight and they get added to the page.
Oftentimes I will consciously try to work out some way to indicate a sense of space. I’m actually kind of pleased with how the compositional structure accomplished that goal in this street sketch.
10 September, 2017. Sketching out in public, as I’ve mentioned countless times before, often results in conversations and gawkers and curiosity. Artists making art are an exotic encounter for many people, and it’s not unusual for a passerby to stop, look over my shoulder, and even share a little story about whatever it is I’m drawing at the time. They might tell me about a sister or a cousin or a neighbor who also makes art of some kind or other. In a hopeful voice they mention Do you happen to know them? I think folks sincerely believe artists have a club that we all belong to and as card carrying members we must – obviously! – all know one another quite well.
I’m interested in hearing their stories, especially when they offer some kind of insight into whatever it is I happen to be sketching at the time. The hardware store (above) was a block or two from the meet up location for our monthly USk sketch out and I just love the place. It seems to me to be one of the last truly authentic hardware stores, but beyond that I really knew nothing at all about it. My friend Peggy asked if I’d ever been in there. I told her I’d always wanted to but had not. Oh, you’ve GOT to go in there, she exclaimed. And now, that little tiny story has me pining to get inside the building. I want to see the old wood floors she described to me. I want to meet the people and explore the aisles to see what cool old surprises I might discover. And I want to do that with my pen and pad in hand.
People – artists included – want to know what I plan to do with my sketches. Do I exhibit them? Frame them and sell them? And yes, sometimes I make prints and sell those. Sometimes I hang work and exhibit it. And because I love books, I kind of have a book project in the back of my mind – my sketches probably are best suited to that format anyway. But mostly, I don’t do anything with them. They’re a visual means of sharing a moment in time, telling the story of where I was and what I was thinking for the twenty minutes or so that I spent scribbling in my journal.
The sketches are a sort of “back up drive” for my memories. I’ve tried repeatedly to find a good location to sketch the water tower depicted in the background of the sketch above. It’s a cool structure and I’m fascinated by it. It’s easy to see as we zoom by on the highway, but finding a convenient sketching location in the warehouse district in which it’s located has defeated me time and again. And on this morning, I was once again defeated – it became an important element in the background of a sketch that started out as a skyline idea… and then evolved into a drawing focused on trash cans!
Maybe it’s the art teacher in me, but I enjoy chatting with our newest sketchers. They’re often curious about what to do on location – how to start a sketch, what techniques are appropriate, etc. Each of us brings a unique vision and a unique approach to handling materials and media. A lot of the “whizzbang” of sketching comes from doing a lot of sketches, practicing and getting comfortable with the tools. One of our members, Liz, has gotten progressively better with her watercolor over the past six or seven months from simply sketching every day. Her renderings are really confident now, with a nicely refined touch of color.
When others ask me about how to get started, I will often share one of several strategies I use to develop a composition. I figure if the design is interesting, the sketch can develop around it. But a great drawing without any context or content just boors me. Case in point: the barber shop above caught my attention. I wasn’t sure how to approach it because most of the building really doesn’t have much character. The interesting parts are around the barber pole, the door, the window, the signage. That’s it. And having run out of ink in my brush pen I penned in the gestural contour lines and left it at that. I felt like the drawing had failed and I didn’t even show it to anyone when we met up after the sketching ended. But back at home with a refilled brush pen I considered where I might add the solid areas of black. And sure enough the contrast and drama of the black fills resulted in a much more interesting image, and one in which I feel like I now need to know more of the story of this place.
I rode my bike to the street fair where we were sketching yesterday. Straddling the bike, I whipped out a pencil to scribble in the gesture lines for the sketch above and the one below. The woman glared at me the entire twenty seconds that I sketched her and I simply didn’t have the guts to refine and ink it while I stood there. Ink, in this case, came later from the safety of a park bench.
(Uni-Ball Deluxe, Kuretake No. 40 – at least until the ink ran dry! – on various Canson papers; North Kansas City, Missouri)
Just Sketching 