Drawing and having breakfast at Shaw's Cafe

I spent Saturday morning with my friend Tom having coffee and quiche at Shaw's Coffee on The Hill. We drew until the day got longer and Tom set off while I drew for a bit longer wanting to fill out a few pages at least. My drawings improved and then even I got a little tired and definitely ready to head on to the next thing.

PS - If anyone would like to suggest a location to hang out and sketch or would like to hang out, shoot me a message and let't get together and draw.
:)

Here is Tom Drawing me and the other scenery.

Drawing at Blueprint Coffee Day II

Had a great morning of drawing. The crowd was thick for morning coffee at Blueprint Coffee. Anna, (an aspiring animator), and I drew as people placed their orders and kept up with the scene with our pens and ink.

Overheard: 
Child: "Mom why do they call this place Blueprint?" 
Mom: "Because I think they followed the blueprint to make the prefect coffee."

Some things we discussed (plus a few extras) that I wanted to note around techniques and themes were:

1. Drawing small boxes with limited lines (like 10) 
2. Drawing the panoramic scene.
3. One and two point perspective 
4. Breaking down multiple views of a scene as it progresses.
5. Action drawing versus precision and finding a balance.
6. The concept of the cartoon as a simplified gesture
7. Breaking down sub-regions of a scene
8. Figures in motion
9. Textures
10. Symbolizing

Over the next week I will break down what I can of each of these points a couple per day..

Out front of Blueprint Coffee

Drawings by Brian

Drawing by Anna

Detail of Completed drawing by Anna

Urban Sketching - Old Webster Groves

I finished off the day with a few panels from Old Webster Groves. While drawing Russsel Vanecek and his wife ran into me sketching during an evening out. We usually run into each other at Marlene's Studio. 

This time the last few days I have been drawing very quickly and gesture-like. I am going to try the same subjects that I drew yesterday again today and this time be more intent on accuracy as a goal and more minimalist in  capturing the details of the scene. 

As I sat drawing, I watched a train pass at the intersection of  North Gore Ave and West Pacific Ave. As an intersection, it does have a feel of an older more idyllic North American town from a time past as a group of teen boys walked across the tracks and horsed around while a few other locals walked up and down Gore around dinner time...

Urban Sketching Instruction: Starting at Blueprint Coffee

Today's Urban Sketching point was Blueprint Coffee.

I wanted to focus today on getting a few panorama style sketches in order to catch the scene. I think it is important to get your sketching done on-scene, even if you take pictures for later as I do. This is because it keeps your sketches fresh and in the moment. It doesn't matter to me too much what the style is, but that the focus is on capturing essential details that make up the scene.  If you get the action of the scene then you can make up the non-essential details later.

This activity of capturing the essence of a scene can be a challenge if characters in the surroundings are moving around all the time.  Just sketch the priority details and if the person or thing in the scene that you are drawing moves, then move on to the next object.

You may even layer sketches on top of each other. I remember a friend Marlene Lewis going over some exercises in her figure drawing session where we drew a figure changing positions over a pose. This is very similar and can teach about motion and intention of the characters you draw.

So is a sketch as such shown here complete? What is the goal? Does it convey what is going on? Could you use any of the sketches to compose a finished painting? 

As an exercise for this week, do some more panorama sketches and capture the horizontally arranged scene.  You could to two or even three panoramas on a page.

Meet at Crittenden Studio and Urban Sketch in Tower Grove Park

Urban Sketch: Hang out, have coffee & draw @ Meshuggah Cafe

Urban and Metro Sketches

Mokabees and other Urban Sketches

Starbucks Sketching

Ted Drewes 2

Ted Drewes Sketches

Second Tuesday: Everyone's ArtworkDrawing at Dick Blick

Everyone's Artwork

Metro Sketching