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...

Seasonal Sketch at Swanson's

There are so many Urban Sketchers in Seattle!  Two days ago, a small sub-group of Friday sketchers met at a local plant nursery to sketch...while there were decorations, Santa and kids, a model train village, flowers, even reindeer and a camel, I was of course drawn to the buildings!  

This is a view inside one of the greenhouses, a one-point, eye level perspective.

I also want to start showing more of my sketching process...I think because I am responding to so many questions on my Craftsy class--probably my favorite part of the teaching process online, and all the sketching process I've developed for the book. I should start showing more process information here... that will be my New Year's resolution!!

To that end, I threw my sketch on the ground and snapped this photo to show how I start complicated scenes with only a few basic shapes in perspective...it really makes the process so much easier to learn to edit and simplify...and quickly block in those basic foundation lines on my page.

You can see my eye level and vanishing point were directly in front of me, at my eye level as I sat on my travel stool. The head of the person in the background is above my eye level line!

I hope to also post my sketches from Bangkok...so stay tuned.  And thank you for checking out this blog!

...because good sketches start with Good Bones.

Today I'll post info on my Seattle Sketching Workshops called GOOD BONES.  I live and breathe perspective drawing and sketching nearly every day--working as an architectural illustrator for many years, teaching architectural sketching, painting in perspective, and especially during my Gabriel Prize study in Le Nôtre's use of perspective in the design of the Gardens at Vaux le Vicomte and Versailles...whew, I am always looking for points that vanish!!

My approach to teaching sketching is based on how I learned to sketch in architecture school at UT Austin.  I had two great teachers, Luis Diviñó and George Villalva.  Villalva's class was so good, that despite it's 8am start time and his strict teaching style, people would sign up for the class repeatedly, even for no credit.  They produced a generation of architects who can really draw well.

George used slides to teach basic perspective concepts, then transitioned us to sketching outside, constantly reinforcing the need to draw a good skeletal sketch in the first 90 seconds or so...good bones!  I use this method in my own architectural illustration work, in my own sketching, and I use this method to teach my students, at Parsons in New York City for 10 years, and now at Cornish College of the Arts in my Drawing Space field sketching class. It's an approach that really works...it is how I will teach the Good Bones workshop and also my DRAW CIVITA workshop in Italy July 2014 (5 spots are open!)

So if you are wanting to learn more about accurate perspective, or how to start and develop a sketch with good bones, you've come to the right place... thanks so much to Urban Sketchers for this support, especially to Gabi Campanario and Orling Dominguez, both amazing and generous-hearted.

Welcome to Drawing Perspectives

Thank you for checking out my new blog, Drawing Perspectives!  On this blog, I hope to post my perspectives on sketching, painting, teaching, as well as how-to's on drawing and watercolor, travel photos, and finding that illusive vanishing point... 

Where could this be?  It is even more stunning in person.

I'm Stephanie Bower, and I live and work in Seattle, Washington.  I've been an architect and architectural illustrator for 25 years or so, both here in Seattle and before that in New York City. I've been traveling and sketching for a long time! I've also taught perspective sketching for many years at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, briefly at the University of Washington (thank you, Frank Ching, for that opportunity!), and currently in the Design Department at Cornish College of the Arts.  As hand drawing disappears from the practice of architecture, I feel it is more important than ever to make sure the ability to draw stays alive and well in the profession.

Sketching attracts crowds in Kathmandu, Nepal, November 2011.

I have the great good fortune to have won an award, The Gabriel Prize, which will allow me to spend 3 months in Paris this summer, sketching and painting architecture and landscape every day--quite literally a dream come true.  This blog will be my online diary as I explore Paris, travel to Italy to teach a sketching workshop, and to Barcelona to participate in the Urban Sketcher's Symposium in July.

Thanks, and I hope you will stay tuned!

+  For more information on architectural illustration work, go to www.stephaniebower.com 
+  For more information or to sign up for the Civita Sketching Workshop 2013, go to www.stephaniebower.com and click on the link.
+  To view blog posts as a correspondent for Seattle Urban Sketchers, go to www.seattle.urbansketchers.org
+  To view a library of field and travel sketches, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/83075812@N07/
+  To view information about the Gabriel Prize, go to 
http://www.gabrielprize.org/
+  To view information on the KRob Architectural Delineation Competition that is now on display at the Dallas AIA, go to 
http://krobarch.com/winners.asp?winner_year=2012