Sketching Techniques for Artists – Alex Hillkurtz

One of the urban sketchers that I came across during the Christmas break was Alex Hillkurtz. Alex teaches a course called ‘Architectural Sketching with Watercolor and Ink‘ that you can find on domestika.org. I highly recommend it!

From his biography it seems that Alex has had a peripatetic life – he born in England, grew up in California and now lives in Paris. His sketching and watercolor work use and are informed by his work as a Hollywood storyboard artist.

Digging into Alex’s process more I was delighted to learn that he had a book recently published that details his approach.

Sketching Techniques for Artists: In-Studio and Plein-Air Methods for Drawing and Painting Still Lifes, Landscapes, Architecture, Faces and Figures, and More as the title suggest goes beyond the architectural sketching that I had enjoyed in the online course and provides a much broader foundation for the beginning artist. I particularly enjoyed the pages that are in light yellow. These are pages where it feels that Alex is talking to you as a friend and mentor, advice that helps provide some perspective on the particular lesson or example. Really great!

To find out more about Alex visit his website here and check out the video of the interview with him below.

Finding the Image

Tripods are a blessing and a curse. Have you ever watched a group of photographers arrive at a location and set up to take some photographs. I would bet that at least had of the group immediately set their tripod up at about eye level and then start making pictures. It’s a natural thing to do and I’m not saying that it’s bad to do that just that it locks you into a particular way of seeing.

I’m just getting back into using a DSLR after a hiatus where I only shot with my iPhone. I’m still reluctant to drag all the gear – the tripod, the bag of lenses, the filters etc. around with me and so at the moment I’m still 95% iPhone. Everything you’ve seen here or on instagram in the last 2 or 3 years has been with the iPhone.

What i’ve realized before and I’m noticing again is that there is a fluidity to shooting with a phone that is lacking with a larger camera. I tend to explore a bit more, move around, explore different angles, get closer, get lower and just generally be more creative. I find this exploration of a scene helps me move beyond the obvious image and get closer to something that is more me.

I plan on still using the phone before I even get my DLSR out of the bag to explore and then once I’ve found the composition pull out the DSLR, tripod and paraphernalia to get the final shot.

How about you? How do you go from initial seeing to final image. Do you mage sketch images to help work through the scene in front of you? How do you do that? Do you use a viewfinder like the painters use? An old slide holder? Your camera like I do? I’d be interested to hear about your process in the comments.

Doing’ it for the ‘Gram

I learn all kinds of stuff by listening to my kids talk to their friends. Some of it immediately, some of it takes me a while to unravel.

It’s snowboard season here in New England which means trips to and from the slopes with groups of high school age kids for me. They are very much into making videos of their exploits to get feedback on how they are doing with learning tricks but also to post on social media. ‘Doin’ it for the ‘gram’ was the phrase used in a rather derogatory tone.

That got me thinking about what I post on social media and why and what are my expectations. I am playing a game with my posts on Instagram, or at least I have some simple rules that I am following. Must be shot and edited on my phone. No wireless transfer of files from any of my ‘fancy’ cameras, no transfer of files from the phone onto my computer for editing. All has to be done on the phone. Also the apps that I use can’t be mobile versions of Lightroom or Photoshop.

This of course is less of an amazing feat now that the phone cameras are so incredibly capable and produce high-res files. It goes without saying that phones themselves are way more powerful computers than the first desktop computers I worked with but then I grew up with a single rotary dial phone in the house if you catch my drift.

The result is a set of photos that are in effect sketches or studies. I’m trying out composition ideas using the phone and quickly processing using filters and effects in a small number of apps – typically Snapseed and VSCO. I’m often accused of being heavy handed with the processing – probably true, certainly lacking the kind of finesse possible on a desktop. Are these the high impact, portfolio best images that will garner lots of ‘likes’ not at all. But that’s not the point.

I’m having fun playing and don’t mind letting people look over my shoulder see my sketchbook develop.

How about you? How do you use social media?

Becoming A First Class Noticer

I’ve been thinking about what it takes to ‘see pictures’. People will tell you that ‘pictures are all around us’ and yet I find that few are able to consistently find them. Why is that?

Personally I feel as though I go through my day with blinkers on, really only paying attention to the things that I need to pay attention to in the specific moment. The things on the periphery are ignored in an effort to get onto whatever is next as expediently as possible.

This is a sentiment that I found echoed in ‘Sketch‘ in which the author, France Belleville-Van Stone has this to say:

Most of us have acquired, with time, the capacity to “tune out” the things around us. This faculty to conveniently ignore the things that don’e “matter” allows us to live without being constantly bombarded with visual stimuli. We need to be able to drive or walk without being distracted by the slightest object in our field of vision.

As adults we have trained ourselves to disregard the landscape around us in order to keep a certain focus, that is, where are we going, how we are going to answer questions during an upcoming interview, how not to trip in those brand new heels so as to avoid public embarrassment.

Jay Maisel seems to have this problem of seeing licked licked. He always carries his camera with him and is always looking for, and finding, pictures. How does he do that? He seems to have retained a child like curiosity in everything around him.

For me this enhanced way of seeing is most easily achieved when I put myself in new situations, where things are strange or scary or strange and scary. It’s amazing to me how I seem to notice everything when I’m in potentially dangerous situations – balancing precariously on rocks in the ocean before dawn, walking along the beach when it’s so foggy I can hear but can’t see the breaking waves or walking through a forest in the near dark hoping that I’m still on the trail. In these circumstances I have a heightened sense of awareness, time slows down, and I can pay attention to an enormous amount of detail. Interestingly this sense of awareness persists, so that I find that I ‘see’ pictures when I’m on my way home in a way that I didn’t an hour or so earlier.

Have you experienced this sensation? How do you get into the ‘picture taking, seeing zone’?

Drawing to Improve your Photography

On a recent archeological expedition in the basement I came across my copy of Betty Edwards’s book ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain‘ and the sketchbook that I had used for the exercises. It had been a while since I looked at the drawings and I must admit that I was surprised – they weren’t actually that bad. There were two exercises that stood out for me in the many that are in the book. The first was to copy a drawing that is shown upside down. Remarkably when you copy an image that is upside down you do a better job of capturing what us there than you do when the same image is right side up. Why? The exercise prompts a shift from the left brain, verbal mode of thinking, to the right brain, visual mode.  We become conditioned to name objects and to have a standard ‘symbol’ that represents the object rather than drawing what is actually in front of us. Having the picture upside down makes it difficult to recognize the image and so there is more likelihood that we will draw what is there than rely our symbol short-cuts. The recognition that we tend to rely on short-cuts rather than truly seeing spills over into photography.  I have wondered on more than one occasion whether using a medium format camera, where the scene before you is viewed inverted, would help advance my photography by removing the familiar, making me more reliant on graphic elements.

The second exercise that stuck with me was drawing a chair.  In this exercise, rather than draw the chair, you are guided to draw the space around the chair.  This is a great lesson in the importance of  negative space and how it defines the object of interest.  How negative space and the space occupied by the object of interest fit together within the boundary of the frame is fundamental to good composition.  Defining the boundary of the frame is as important in photography as it is in drawing.  While some may argue about the validity of cropping from the standard 2 x 3 format of the DSLR, it is unquestionable that some compositions would work better in alternate formats.

The drawing that I have been using to support my photography is the compliment to the writing that I have been working on.  My drawings roughly map out ideas for new photos that I have developed through some of the writing exercises. The drawings are not frameworks for future Photoshop constructions but rather ways to help me be prepared for what I may find when I’m on location.  While I may not find the exact drawings that I had imagined, they allow me to see opportunities where I may not have otherwise.