ILLUS5040: Urban Sketching Research

Some of the artists I've been looking at over the week mostly come from two books that I bought in preparation for urban sketching, which were: The Art of Urban Sketching by Gabriel Campanairo and Phil Dean's book and guide on Urban Drawing.

Pete Scully

One artist I found within the art of urban sketching is Pete Scully who is now based in California but originally comes from London. I love the way he uses line within his work and how vibrant it can look considering his use of watercolours. I particularly like how he is drawn to fire hydrants of all things, something that seems so mundane in nature and something not many would consider drawing. Perhaps because of the fact he is originally from London where fire hydrants aren't seen as they are in America they seem more fascinating to him. I sort of feel the same way but not on as much of a scale when moving from Wales to England. I couldn't have done urban sketching back in Wales because of where I live. I come from a very secluded and quiet hamlet with a population of about 40. It's mountainous landscape with a few houses dotted around the valley, urbanisation hasn't hit the village I come from so moving from Wales back to Carlisle always feels strangely like a culture shock. I become fascinated with just the concept of terraced houses and the buildings that surrounding my own. 

Paul Heaston

Paul Heaston is someone else I looked at he is an artist who I was interested in for the techniques he uses to draw. Similar to what I was doing, I used fine liners for a majority of my drawings with a bit of brush pen and ink and pens as a way to fill in black spots to create contrast. Paul Heaston has a very crisp and confident way of drawing which I wish I could too achieve. 

Phil Dean

Phil Dean is similar to Phil Heaston however he is a lot more fluid in the way he lines and his lines are also a lot more dynamic in nature. Even though I did not go for using dip pens or brush pens as strongly for this part of the brief I still looked into the techniques he used. However I believe I lack confidence when it comes to using dip pens or brush pens and because of that I felt that any work using such tools would look a lot most lackluster than if I used fine liners. Perhaps I should have experimented more but I felt like a beginner or an amateur when it came to doing urban sketching in general so I perhaps stuck more to my comfort zone and instead focused on getting the techniques down.