Thursday, July 25, 2013

Question - when is a sketch an urbansketch ... and when is it not ...?

Hi Urbansketchers

I am loving seeing all the beautiful sketches from the BCN Symposium! I think the best part about it, even for a non-attender, is you can still be inspired from the sketchers and their sketches. 

In Australia, many of us don't mind driving ... driving long distances with not that many towns in between with signs saying Town A - 300km etc. As a uni student, I remember the 24 hr bus trips we had to take during our summer vacation for our "practicals" and the thump thump thump of the bus' bumper bar hitting the kangaroos at night ... I now here that the companies fly the students! 

So saying that you would drive 500km over 5 - 5.5 hrs in a day with a couple of stops doesn't attract the "you're mad" look that you get in the UK. 

It's a similar distance to driving from:
London to Newcastle, Madrid to Sevilla, France to Bordeaux, Tokyo to Kyoto, Halfway between Vancouver and Calgary ..., Montreal to Boston, New York to Pittsburgh, Mexico to Oaxaca.

I got a little bit carried away couch travelling ...  

This leads me to the question of when is a sketch an urbansketch and when does it stop being an urbansketch? 

This wasn't a leisurely car trip where we can sit for a couple of minutes to take a photo or 10 mins to do a sketch! It's a go ... go ... go ... car trip as M keeps the pace up. 

I couldn't figure out how to draw with watercolour in a moving vehicle so I used the Sketchbook Pro app on my iPad with a bamboo stylusI sketched the pictures below of the scenery from the car to kill the boredom of a 5.5 hr drive - so it's sketching from what I see. 

I couldn't draw the straight lines of the road so I left it out. The Australian roads aren't bad - but going 110 kmph and drawing a straight line on an iPad is difficult. 

This leads me to my question again of when is a sketch an "urbansketch" and when does it stop becoming an urbansketch as I left some key elements out - ie the road and other cars. 

They took about 5-10 mins and I drew one every hour or so or when I noticed different looking clouds. 

A

PS I bought a A$3 stylus from Miniinthebox as well, and it works well. I prefer the tip of the bamboo stylus for scribing. But I am sitting on the fence to justify the A$30 bamboo stylus for sketching alone. 

PPS I will leave a sketch of the "Feathers" drawer from the Queensland Museum that I did on the weekend, just in case the others aren't an urban sketch ... 


Sky 4, 130715

Sky 5, 130715

Sky 6, 130715


The photo ... 

Untitled

The back-up sketch ... 
Queensland museum