Block out and Color...

This morning's sketch with the Seattle Urban Sketchers at the Starbucks Roastery and Tasting Room.

This is the initial blocking out of the sketch--can you guess what vertical corner I drew first?

And this is the completed pencil and watercolor sketch. I think at least half of the pencil work
ended up on the back of my hand, so it all got a little too gray!  Got very dark in the space too, so while I painted 90% at this spot, I did take it outside near a window to add the last bits...while I sipped a green tea latte next to Sunil's talented family of sketchers!

Click on this image to see it larger!

And in case anyone is reading this post, my workshop "Soaring Spaces" 
was selected for the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Manchester this July...hooray!! I am happy and honored...

Workshops Schedule -- 5 Opportunities to Learn!

’Tis the season to start planning sketching workshops!  And because all good sketches start with a good foundation, these workshops I offer are called “Good Bones”!

I’m so thrilled to add that my book, the fourth in the series, The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Perspective is already available for pre-sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Here is the schedule for upcoming workshops through June.

If you are interested in joining any of these workshops, please contact me ASAP by email 

stbower@comcast.net to hold your spot!!

SEATTLE (3)

Pike Place Market workshops in Seattle:

March 4 -  5 + March 6 (1/2 day):  Good Bones | Perspective & Watercolor

This workshop devotes one day to learning perspective, a second day to watercolor basics, 

and a third 1/2 day to put it all together when sketching on location.

Days 1 and 2, we spend the morning working from PowerPoint lessons in a classroom at the Pike Place Market, then apply this to sketching on location in the afternoon. Sunday is a half day, when we’ll sketch and paint at the lovely restored King Street Station in Seattle.

Cost: $200, maximum 15 participants

April 9, Saturday: Good Bones | Watercolor

This one-day workshop focuses on the use of Watercolor in architectural sketching—materials, mixing colors with a simple palette, and quick techniques. We’ll look at lessons via PowerPoint in the classroom early in the day, then sketch on location in the colorful Market in the afternoon. There is nothing like watching someone paint in person for learning how!

Cost: $100, maximum 12 participants

May 13 -14 + May 15 (1/2 day): Urban Sketchers Workshop, Good Bones | Perspective & Watercolor

This workshop is offered in together with Urban Sketchers. 

Friday is devoted to learning perspective, Saturday to watercolor basics. We spend the morning working from PowerPoint lessons in a classroom at the Pike Place Market, then apply this to sketching on location downtown in the afternoon.

Sunday is an opportunity to put it all together as we join the monthly Seattle Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl from 10-1pm.

Cost: $200, maximum 15 participants

ITALY

June 24 - 30:  DRAW CIVITA 2016 in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy 

5 days of immersive instruction in architectural perspective and watercolor in an amazing hill town north of Rome.

There are only 1-2 spots still available! Maximum 7-8 participants.

More information can be found on www.stephaniebower.com

ONLINE Sketching class:

Filmed this past August in Denver for Craftsy, “Perspective for Sketchers” is an inexpensive online course that you can view any time, from any device, as often as you want.  State-of-the-art filming and approach, albeit a little on the cute side :), Craftsy has tapped into Urban Sketchers instructors and offers several really great classes on sketching. To join the over 2000 (!) other participants worldwide in my course, please use this link for a course discount:  Perspective for Sketchers

Thanks for your interest in Sketching!  And please pass this info on to anyone who might be interested!

Out of my Comfort Zone

As I look ahead to Manchester, I find I'm also looking back to Singapore.

The USk Symposium is great on so many levels--to meet other sketchers from around the world (who are also willing to get up before dawn to sketch the streets, to draw while walking, to draw while eating, to sit on the ground to get the right angle, to sketch until you are about to drop from heat--are we a little obsessive?  YES, and it's so great!!), to be inspired by new people and new places, and at its core, to get to learn from and sketch next to people whose work I so admire.

In Singapore, I gave a lecture on perspective (my thanks to all who attended) and got to take three workshops.  It was really hard to decide which ones, as so many looked great, but in the end I settled on what I felt I most needed to learn.  So I steeled myself for what was certainly to be an OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE experience, which is actually a huge benefit of these workshops..to be gently pushed into unfamiliar sketching territory by a really good teacher.

1-- First Singapore workshop was Nina Johansson's "Light in the Spaces in Between:  A Watercolor Workshop". In addition to her beautiful linework, I love the glow that Nina gets in her sketches using really saturated and luminous colors.  

We started with a pencil stone study, then a color study--I had to work hard to leave a key portion white and build up contrasts in other parts of the sketch.  

And in the final sketch of our subject, I tried to let the yellow-green paint vary in color and sink to the bottom, as if pulled down by gravity...it's harder than it looks!

2-- The next Singapore workshop was Shari Blaukopf's "Big Brush Colour: Capturing that First Impression".
There are no words for how much I admire Shari's sketching...her sense of 2-d composition is exquisite, and I love how she applies paint--the watercolor feels wet in the sketch--by tilting her paper, the colors pool and sink and feel like a real water media, mixing and blending in all kids of brilliant happy accidents (or are they???) And together, with great composition and beautiful painting, she can make the most mundane subject look like fine art.

We took a little sliver of a view of downtown framed by trees, and first did value studies. This is a step I usually skip out of impatience, so it was good to do. I liked trying two variations on composition to see which held the most promise.

Then color, doing my best to emulate Shari...

3-- And in my third and final workshop, I was REALLY out of my comfort zone...drawing people in Suhita Shirodkar's "Capturing Chaos: Drawing a Crowd".
Suhita is amazing...she doesn't stand back and draw people from afar, she gets right up in front of them and so quickly captures a sense of their body in motion, midst the chaos, which in this case is a flower market in front of a temple.  This was really hard for me, and I struggled with sketching people...you can tell I cheated and relied heavily on the architectural backdrop to pull this sketch together!

Alas, I will never be able to sketch like Nina, Shari, or Suhita, but it was great fun to try for a few hours.  I figure, if you can get one good take-away out of a workshop, you're doing well. You likely won't produce a masterpiece (I can't quite believe I'm actually posting these sketches), but you'll get a great experience...and I did!