Sketching
Sketching is the visual presentation of a concept or an idea. Distinguish it from drawing, painting or rendering. Sketching is immediate, un-contrived, and fast. Sketching expresses seeing and the thought process. Drawing, painting and rendering express media, composition and visual arts. When you sketch, most of your attention is on the scene in front of you. When you draw, paint or render, most or all of your attention is on the paper and media in front of you.
Sketching for urban design aims to express and articulate the experience of urban space. You will eventually want to sketch from different vantage points, and with a larger number of sketches to open yourself to the experience and to record the urban space. It needs to be quick and simple or it will exhaust you. Sketches should not take you more than between 3mn to 30mn.
The very same techniques apply to writings: apply the very same fundamental techniques of sketching, and instead of lines and shapes on the paper, you will use words and sentences. The same applies again, if you use a camera, a video-camera or soundrecording.
Frame
The frame is the key element of sketching, and the source of most initial stumbling blocks. The frame represents the field of vision. Think of the frame as a camera viewfinder. Hold your sketching pad at arms length and relax your eye. What you sketch should be what's behind the sketchpad.
If what you want to sketch is bigger and spills out on the sides of your sketchpad held at arms' length, either reposition yourself by moving backwards, or draw what fits within your sketchpad frame only. If it seems smaller, draw what you see. Then, if you want to draw more detail, move in closer and start a new sketch - this will also be your first step towards Serial Vision.
We usually see a lot more than what we can sketch - because the eye continuously refocuses. The fundamental point of sketching is to relax both your mind and your eye, and let your hand follow your eye within the frame.
As you develop this most fundamental technique, you will forget you sketch and think urban design - going through the frame and composition in terms of urban design theories.
When you try to sketch outside the frame - meaning, what you sketch does not fit in the frame as you hold it at arms' length, you are no longer sketching, you are drawing. This means that in order to draw, you must introduce an intellectual step to transcribe what you see into what you draw.
Sketch by looking mostly at your scene, and a lot less at what you sketch. You need to trust your hand and worry not about making a picture. Once you are relaxed with your frame, look at what you see. As much as possible, keep sketchpad and scene in line - learn to hold your pad at or just below eye height. Even holding your sketchpad on your lap may be too far, and forces you to move your eyes too much.
Learn to sketch standing up. Learn to sketch with gloves on. Your material must be simple and immediate - hence the clipboard and a pen or graphite.
Once you have quickly blocked the scene in a few minutes, you can relax your arms to your waist or your knees and add in a few details. And that should be enough. Anything beyond that will be rendering - which is fine. Simply understand at that point that your sketch is done, and you are now enjoying drawing or painting into your sketch. That can be the opportunity as well, to block in some colors, for future reference until you are ready to draw from the sketch in the studio.
Spend time allowing your eye to explore the elements. Now you are ready to guide your sketch through composition. At that moment you are ready to simply fill in the blanks so to speak and sketch the elements as quickly and simply as you look at them where they appear in the frame. The key is to give the eye more time and to simplify the hand.
Media
The foundation of sketching is the clipboard. The clipboard is simple and flat and it can hold a variety of paper types. The clipboard gives you a standard letter, 8.5x11 format, which works in all scanners. The clipboard is easily carried along, and can be kept in your vehicle or your satchel. It is versatile, and does not need to be exclusive to sketching.
Notebook-type clipboards are ideal, because the clip is thin with a low profile, they fold - thus protecting your drawing - and oftentime have a vinyl covering which allows you to lay wet watercolour paper on the back. An elastic is convenient to hold the loose end of the paper so it doesn't flap in the wind.
A sketchpad or block does the same. A sketchbook is a somewhat different proposition: a sketchbook suggests you will keep an on-going record of sketches in the same place, which is fine but more advanced and demanding. Indeed, to commit to filling the 30 to 70 pages of your sketchbook can be daunting, especially in the beginning when you will be overly critical of the finished product, failing to see what you sketched for what you wanted to draw. Also, a sketchbook is better suited for a topic you will follow like a running diary. A sketchbook works well also to record personal drawings and ideas, which of course falls outside of what we do here, since we sketch what we see instead of what we think.
An assortment of paper types works best for urban design sketching: 20lb bond paper with a fineliner; 90lb rough toothed paper or sketchbook with 9B graphite pencil or colour pencils; or 140lb cold-pressed paper with watercolour. Trace paper is nice to carry along, to work out an idea, or composition on a sketch you like and want to experiment with.
Bond and fineliner are the most immediate media. They reproduce perfectly, will scan at the lowest resolution for internet upload, and can be blown up to any format with no loss of detail. Bond and fineliner is where you should start. You should aim for speed - 10mn at the most. You draw lines and outlines, and add values and textures with hatchings and dotting. Line sketches impress people the most, because of the level of abstraction and a sense of the familiar. Your viewer understands the media - it is the same they use daily for writing themselves. As a result this is the media which conveys your thought process the best. Any other media creates an artistic barrier, where the viewer responds to the media as much as to the subject.
9B Graphite pencils and rough paper are the most intuitive media. They are also the fastest. You can literally complete a scene in under 3mn. Carry a pencil sharpener and keep the graphite sharp. Learn also to draw with the angled side of the sharpened tip, so you keep it sharp as you draw. Learn to hold it in your palm instead of between fingers. The aim is to draw light, shadows and shapes. Think of it more as you would a brush than a pencil. Use your finger or a blotting pad to smudge the graphite. And of course no erasing. Erasers only play a part as a rendering medium. Your 9B Graphite also reveals the grain of the paper, and it is an important part for the viewer. There is sensual delight in it.
Colour pencils and rough paper are the most simple media. Carry anywhere from 4 to 12, plus a white. The more you have the less you sketch. The point of having 12 is to add to the four to create better value. For each of the base 4 (usually red, blue, yellow, green) you add a hue on either side of the colour wheel to suggest light and shade, and that makes twelve. White is essential to colour pencils - because it allows you to blend. Without white, simply use 4 colours for even faster sketches. Unlike watercolor, color pencil do not work well with graphite. Lay your first blocking and composition with the blue pencil. Use the blue pencil also for shadows, and anywhere you have the urge to reach for graphite. Add red to block where subjects are closer or to suggest perspective, and use yellow sparingly to suggest highlights. Green produces grey for the red, and warmth for the blue, in addition to where you need foliage and grass. Green works well for the transition from middle to back.
Watercolors are the most expressive media. Wet on wet expresses mood. Wet on dry expresses form and accentuates the texture of the paper. Dry brush - true dry brush that is - belongs in the studio. Watercolor is important because it allows you to sketch the reverse of line drawing. You sketch light and shapes. Brushes give you a soft feel as if you touched what you see. A mop, a flat and a round are the brushes you need - in the smaller sizes. If you carry only one brush, the mop will accentuate mood, the round will accentuate form. Watercolor requires not only good technique with the media, but also to refine the art for sketching so you're not fumbling with your paint, paper and brush. A wet paper will time your sketching with the time it takes to dry - usually 15mn to 20mn. You should aim for minimalist palettes, and your choice of palette is just as important as the composition itself.
F pencil along with a 9b graphite works great with watercolors on a watercolor sketchbook for precise recording of a scene. It is fast, impeccable and still quite loose. The F pencil quickly blocks in the scene, the 9b graphite adds values and the watercolors are used with washes where a little more time is spent first to build a minimalist palette. This works great once you are confident with your sketching and you have a topic you are working on for which you have assigned a sketchbook. Depending on the situation your sketchbook can be quite small - no bigger than a notebook, and along with a pocket brush and three or four paint tubes, or a tiny pocket set, you can take it anywhere.
Linework
Before you build a scene, sketch elements and subjects. Points, straight lines, geometric shapes and free form constitute the syntax of sketching.
Interpret all you see as simple shapes, straight lines, arcs and points.
Points: First feel your media with points - dots if you will. As you look at your scene, touch your paper with your fineliner, pencil or brush where your eye looks at the scene. Then lift it to touch again where you look again, and do this in relationship to your composition. This will rest your eye and hand, and along with the composition, will give you a starting point which is almost the end point of your sketch. You can take this technique further, and literally sketch by connecting the dots. Crosses or intersecting ticks, make great points from which to start straight lines, and to express where light and shade meet. Conversely, and especially with brushes, a dot can become a blob where shadows cast.
Lines: A line is what connects two points. We only draw straight lines and arcs. You make a straight line by going back and forth between two points. Barely touching the paper between the two points, fairly decisively after this, slowly as you relax. You do not stop in between the two points, and you do not lift your pen or pencil. Add more points in between if it feels odd. Avoid the "feathering" way of drawing a line where the pencil draws a lot of little strokes. A line is continuous, uninterrupted motion. The thick part of the straight line is at the points, and wherever that line is in fact the dark value of a shadow in the scene you look at. The thick part of an arc is in the middle, and it tapers to its originating points. The thick part of the arc is either inside or outside of the curve and it depends on where shadows cast from the curve.
Shapes: a rectangle is not a roundish shape drawn with one continuous line. It is four distinct lines that cross over where they connect four points. A circle is not a blob - it is the connection of separate arcs - and in sketching, will be affected by light, so half of your circle will be the outer and the other half will be the inner side of the shape.
With watercolour, practice making good and quick washes. You do this by loading your brush once with water, squeezing that water from the belly of the brush against the side of the pan into the paint and reloading the brush with the mix. Learn the different mixes and dilutions: syrupy, creamy, oily, milky, watery. More watery dilutions belong to painting. The five dilutions will give you five different brush strokes and feel, and with these you will sketch in shapes - from flat atmospheric washes to forms. With brushes, think less of sketching lines than shapes.
Freeforms: In sketching, freeform is where you add detail. Freeform must be done exclusively by not looking at your paper. Once your frame, composition and blocking are established, your eye and hand should be so coordinated and your eye so relaxed that what you follow with your eye your hand should follow.
In the context of the sketching format you will be following freeforms over a square inch or two at the very most. Pen or brush pressure is essential to freeform - you literally touch the paper in the manner your eye looks at the scene.
The other aspect of freeform in the context of sketching is texture: hatching or dotting. For these, which you would typically add last, you actually look at your paper - and at that point you are on the verge of rendering, but then you now have a completed picture that mirrors the scene in front of you. A word of caution: resist using this step to correct or add to your sketch; this step is simply to express form, light and texture; this step should not take you more than a few seconds; this step should be used sparingly only where you add detail. Anything beyond that will best be enjoyed in the studio.
Composition
The point of composition for sketching is to use guiding principles for your eye and hand. You can almost reduce the technique of sketching to that of the frame and composition. Since we are not attempting to draw or render, you will simply place what you see in the frame with a few lines, points - or shapes if you use a brush.
Rule of threes: Divide your frame into three vertical and three horizontal areas. Quickly decide which of the 9 subframes your subject will fit in. Then, from the horizon line, divide your frame with the three grounds and the three skies.
Horizon: Second, identify the horizon line. This is where the sky meets the ground.
Eye Level: Then you let your eye rest, and where you look is your eye level. Identify where it is in relation to the horizon. This will determine perspective. Perspective by size means something farther will be smaller. Perspective by vanishing point means that what is farther will be closer to your eye level line than something nearer. Simple, yet fundamental, and all you need to know about perspective for sketching - the rest is about drawing perspective. The reason is that all you need is to look at your scene and draw it. "Farther-smaller, farther-closer" is enough for a quick sketch.
Ground: Identify foreground, middleground, and background. Determine where your focus is, although and especially for the purpose of sketching it will be the middle ground. Your focus is where you will add in details.
Sky: identify foresky, middlesky and backsky. This will strongly support the perspective. Either your sky is full of the same clouds, or is filled with different clouds. In the former, you will have one or two of these clouds in your foresky, a few more in the middle sky and a lot more in the backsky. In the latter, identify where in the foresky, middlesky or backsky the different clouds meet.
Value: identify first what is dark, what is bright and what is grey. In the dark and the bright there is no detail. Then, in the grey, identify dark grey, middle grey and light grey. For the purpose of sketching, middle grey is where your details will be. Quickly assign these 5 values within your 9 subframes. 5 values works best for sketching, instead of the 7 values for drawing and rendering where you further divide dark and light greys. The combination of the 5 values, the 9 subframes, the blocking of subjects and where to add detail is your sketch.
The greatest hurdle to sketching is being unclear about what you sketch and attempting to draw what you should be sketching. As you sketch, continously go back to the basics: frame, composition, value. Remind yourself to look at the scene in front of you as it is bounded by the frame, and look into that scene for middleground, foreground and background. Then sketch your main subject into one of the subframes.
Palette
Building a palette is reserved of course for watercolor, and to a very limited extent to colour pencil.
When you build a palette for sketching with watercolor, you in fact sketch on your palette by combining minimal paints. The aim is to match the unique light and hues of the scene in front of you. Resist the urge to think of the palette as colors - think of it as light. Try to start with as few paints as possible: two, three or four - sepia and indigo are perfect for two primaries, and either ideal for monochrome watercolor sketches. Next add paints you would consistently mix with your primary paints. Next add earth pigments. Finally add pigments on the warm side.
On your palette, you mix the light in front of you, in the absence of forms, yet you somehow retain frame and composition. You also use the palette to feel the mix and dilutions, and brush loading. A mixing brush separate from your painting brush is a really good idea. You then load the paint brush to fill the colors in the composition. Pocket sets come with a little break-apart pocket brush which is perfect for this.
Your watercolor palette is usually a combination of a flat mixing surface with small indented paint wells, and typically three wash wells. Once you have selected mixes of paints on the flat surface, you should prepare your washes as follows. For landscapes: sky, trees, earth (buildings). For figure: skin, background, cloth. For botanicals: leaf, background, bloom. Of course you should know which of the three your painting fits it - and if it is a combination, fill in the other one or two by sketching them in with your background paint at a thicker dilution - although you would typically do that with the paint mixes from the flat palette so you are past the wash stage.
Once your palette is ready, it should mirror the scene in an abstract manner without shapes - just as precisely as linework mirrors the same scene without color (light). You then convert the abstraction that is your palette to the representation that is your paper painting.
Before you work on your palette, you should have decided between wet-in-wet or wet-in-dry. That would determine whether to presoak your paper. Please note the wet-in-wet still applies to a dry paper that was not presoaked, in order to work in the paints, create backruns and use diffusion. Presoaking is done to accentuate the washes, and accentuate backrun and diffusion. Presoaking means you must time your painting with the various stages of wetness of your paper. A strict wet-in-dry lays in washes in patches side by side for a distinctive watercolor effect that makes use of the white of the paper, or as the next step in a linework and tinting approach. Watercolor is most likely the medium that gives you the greatest possible range in styles and effect, not only for style but also for function from the intended use of the painting, from expressionism, to realism and fast sketchwork.
There are several steps to progress through your watercolor. Step 1: block in your composition with F pencil, 9B graphite or grey (sepia, indigo) wash. Step 2: lay your washes. Step 3: either lay in your dark shades (if you use a secondary palette), or your darkest outlines (split primaries methods) or dark overlays (colorist method), using a mop or a round. Step 4: continue with either the light shades (secondary palette) or the colors (for split primaries and colorist), using a round or a flat. Step 5: fill in all the shadows, using a round or a flat. Step 6: finish off the detailed linework of the focal point or focal progression, using a small detail round.
A palette for color pencils is somewhat different. You build that palette by selecting as few pencils as possible, and working out swatches with and without white pencil blending until you have the lights you like. Then you add color pencils for the hues you need on either side of a pencil for lights and dark, and it needs not be for all of them. A palette is not essential for color pencils: you work them out of the box to create perspective and emphasize form in addition to adding color references for your sketch.
Subject
Your subject matter in urban design will consist of a number of other elements or subjects. These will fall in to either architecture, landscapes or figures.
These subjects will be the elements you observe in the scene you have selected. In addition to frame and composition, spend the time to understand them well, because they are what this is all about. It is easy to forget subject and give yourself in to artistic delight. Even when this happens though, you will be left with worthwhile sketches. Keeping subject in mind, however, will transmute sketching into urban design.
Learn to draw symbols - which means shorthand thumbsketches for trees, cars, buildings and people. A thumbnail sketch for these should come to you as quickly as writing a word. Simple shorthand symbols combined in composition produce the most artifice where the viewer will see the scene instead of the method. It will free you as well to see and for speed. Symbols work best with fineliner linework.
Learn to draw people. At a distance they are figures. A dot for the head, and an oblong shape for the body. Draw two people or groups of people as one shape. Only draw facial features if the face occupies one entire subframe. You then draw dots for eyes, slight slants for nostrils and straight little lines for mouths. Anything in between you draw arms and legs, scalps and dot in eyes. And people's eyes are at the same level, unless they are taller or shorter, or coming up or down at you. It is the size of their bodies that change with distance. For drawing more people, spend time figure and portrait drawings.
Learn to sketch architecture. The almost totality of architecture is rectangles and triangles. You do not draw all the windows, and all the doors. You only draw a few of these where they are in the grey, out of light and dark. If you are specifically sketching architecture, focus on elevations. For architectural perspectives, spend time drawing perspectives one building at a time. When you come back to sketching it, leave most of that knowledge behind, and go back to drawing simple geometry, and shadow lines where roofs meet walls, and under the window sills and under door jambs. Keep a dark line where the building meets the ground.
Learn landscapes. Perspectives to the horizon are a combination of hierarchy and size. Skies and clouds need to be done quickly. Trees, branches and rocks are done with straight line - they do not curve. Trees are balanced. The underside of rocks is dark. And in perspective rocks start as dots in the background, become little circles in the middleground and you only draw one rock or two with geometric shapes in the foreground. Pathways are perspectives, as are surfaces with increasing rythm the farther you draw. Learn to draw water simply. Little waves only appear in the shade, and reflections only need to be suggested.
Keep a sketchbook of recurring forms: trees, skies, clouds, cars. Use a variety of media to sketch them, and aim to sketch them quickly and from different perspectives. The result is that you will draw them the way you write letters, without thinking of the letter but of the words they make and the meaning these words have in a sentence, in what the sentence expresses in your essay.
