Three months have past

The crisp autumn air these days reminds me of the fresh chilly morning in Portland, USA.
These are some sketches from the rest of sessions that I attended.

Urban Nature



In the session by Jason, we went to the union station and sketched some nature thing in the urban environment.
This is a construction site viewed from the footbridge. In the morning, the sky was covered with thick clouds but all were cleared in an hour from mountain side.



These are garden trees near the station.

Urban Composition


In the session by Gabi, we went to Pioneer Square and we sketched about what was going on at the site. This is a reportage: Urban Sketchers were everywhere in the square. In the foreground, middle ground and background there they were!

Urban People





In the session by Isabel, we went to Farmers Market and kept drawing people there. We even drew people in the streetcar on our way to get there.
People come and go, stay and move. What ever the situation was, I just focused on capturing their posture as much as I could. As to some figure, I just managed to draw head and some are upper half of their bodies. I didn't intend to finish or complete the figure. These are done on the large-size Japanese notebook includes an Urban Sketchers logo embossed on the cover: one of the generous souvenir from the symposium.

Urban Architecture



In the session by TIA, many of us drew the building of PNCA. TIA's instruction was concise. These lines go like this and the other side of lines go like this. ( She said something like that with gesture. Sorry, I don't remember exact phrase)
And here is the result.

Here again I would love to thank to all the people who made this happened. To your effort, friendship and blog on USK.

My results from Urban Line session

Urban Line


In this session by Frank Ching, we went to the riverside and I drew Steel Bridge. It was a really unique bridge. The middle of lower part of the bridge is movable: A vertical-lift bridge. I saw it went up and a ship went through the beneath and then it went down. After returning it's original position, then a train ran across it. (You can see the train runs in my sketch. )
Mr. Ching's advice to me was to follow the way how the structure was built.(I don't remember the exact phrase but I understand something like that) And to draw the structure, you should draw not only the thing you can see ( superficial details) but also draw hidden part behind. I'm still not so happy with my result since I couldn't capture the lower deck of the bridge. There are some missing pillars backside but thanks to Mr. Ching, I like the upper part.


Then I drew the buildings seen across the river. This glassy building was a tough one. I couldn't figure out what it was exactly like. After drawing these sketches I realized that how great those fellow architects' understanding of structure is and how skillful seemingly easily drawn lines are! I added colors even though it was a Urban Line session. I couldn't resist my desire to make up my deficiency.

Urban Color Games

I was assigned to lead two sessions of "Urban Color" for the Symposium. No problem, I love color! But I was keen to come up with something more challenging and enriching than "let's all go out and sketch with some colors." Luckily, the folks in my sessions were up for playing along with my games.

The first exercise we did was to draw with a non-black line. When you use a colored line, a few magical things happen, including: the line is no longer necessarily the darkest part of the sketch; objects that are the same color as the line take on a special power (as in the blue streetcar below); the mood and light of the scene shifts to be warmer or cooler, etc. Here's two views looking in opposite directions on 11th Avenue, one with a sanguine line, one with a blue line:


And here's a pink line. (I borrowed what I thought was a colored pencil for this one. Turned out to be a watercolor pencil, so my line dissolved as I colored. I did my best to work with it.):


Next, we tried drawing the same scene twice, but coloring the two sketches differently. The first sketch was colored in a literal or realistic fashion, really trying to match the existing colors as seen. The second one was colored with an impressionistic or fantasy scheme. It was great to see people having fun with this exercise. In many cases, the sketch with the "wrong" colors was more successful. I suspect this is because you can convey more of the light and feel of a scene when you are not tied into trying to communicate color information.





The final exercise was the really awesome one. Find a friend and try this yourself! We each did a line drawing, then handed it off to another sketcher, who did the colors. It was wonderful to see how someone else would color your drawing, and also wonderful to color a drawing you didn't have to do yourself. I was lucky enough to get paired with Kumi Matsukawa. Coloring in her sketch, I forgot it wasn't my own (except for a scary moment when I realized I'd painted a sculpture as if it was a tree--saved by some panicked blotting and scrubbing). And looking at Kumi's colors on my sketch, I find it hard to believe it's really my drawing.

Here we are, hard at work (Photo by Don McNulty:


Here's Kumi's sketch, as colored by me:


And here's my sketch as colored by Kumi (and so much better than if I'd colored it myself!):


Cool stuff, right?

These exercises are all worth repeating and also work outside of the Urban Sketching context. I encourage you to try them out. Whether or not you love all the results as stand-alone pieces, it'll be fun and provide some new perspectives and insights.

Kumi and Pete Scully both did posts about their experiences in my color workshop--go check those out. (I suspect some other folks also blogged about this; drop a link in the comments and I'll add you!)

My results from Urban Color session

First of all, I thank to all of you who made this special event happen! Special thanks to Gabi. As Jason Das said in his interview with Gabi, there may be many sketchers in the world but without you, there wouldn't have been“ Urban Sketchers” nor wouldn't have had a chance to gather like this. Happy 1st Urban Sketching Symposium in Portland. Nice to meet you all in person!

Urban Color



In this session by Jason, we drew two same image but colored differently. That means I changed fue and I love the result.
The right image, I tried to capture the original color of the scene: a white car and green woods.
The left one I added a bit yellow on the car and made the woods look purple. I like the later more. Because it has much fresh
feel. This experiment tells me that sketching is not always copying the color we see or stick to the true color image but rather extract the ambience using your own palette. This idea made my following sketching easier.



This image, I drew lines and other person ( this time Jason) added color.( I also added color on his line work) This collaboration was also an eye opener. By doing this, I recognized my own tendency of coloring by comparing his way and how other person see and drew the same view differently. These are done at first day in the morning and this session excited me to become insomnia.

Sketched!

The symposium weekend was the kind of event that, yes, made an impact as it took place, but will certainly inspire and instruct and delight for a long time to come. Home for less than 24 hours, I'm already feeling its impact. For various reasons, I was not 100% myself while I was there, but still managed to leap in and do some sketches---here are some. More to come!

Symposium Participant - Kumi Matsukawa

Hello, my name is Kumi Matsukawa and am a Tokyo correspondent.I'm coming to the Symposium from Japan. Nice to meet you all. I am a freelance illustrator, I mainly draw story boards for TV-CMs, and I have watercolor and pastel classes to teach near my place.
It was fifteen years ago when I visited the USA last time and just coming to Portland itself is such a thrill for me. Moreover I really look forward to meeting all the enthusiastic sketchers who participate as well as those who give lectures there.
It is amazing that after less than one year of joining Urban Sketchers, I 'll have such a opportunity to see so much influential people at a time.
I hope through the 3-day symposium I 'll learn like a sponge!





On top of waterbrushes and a portable watercolor box, I 'll carry a chocolate box full custom-made palette and some brushes.




My flickr site