I had on my City of Redmond Arts Instructor hat on last Saturday and led a group of four enthusiastic people in an introduction to Urban Sketching starting at Redmond’s Downtown Park on a beautiful sunny day. After meeting and greeting and a bit of an introduction as to what urban sketching is - drawing on location and drawing what you see - I had them warm up with their first exercise. I gave each person a viewfinder to use to help limit their focus and do some thumbnail sketches with, orientated both horizontally and vertically. I showed one of the cool things to do with a viewfinder on a thumbnail. It becomes like a frame and sliding that frame around the thumbnail helps to clarify if the subject is in a good spot for a later sketch or needs to be moved to a different spot. It’s amazing how helpful a thin piece of cutout cardboard can be! I shared a number of strategies of ways to approach sketching and then it was time to let the students loose. We moved to the train signal sculpture and I had them try sketching. One student gave me the challenge of how to draw a foreshortened perspective of the sculpture.

The Train Signal Sculpture

Students were looking at the train signal sculpture and identifying what was the fore and mid ground and what was the background and skyline.

Urban Sketchers at work!

Students working on their assignment.

1st Throwdown!

The exercise here was to use three different colored pencils to identify the fore-, mid- and backgrounds.

Final drawing challenge

Students here were set loose to sketch what they wanted.

2nd Throwdown!

Here the students could use what they wished and draw what they wanted during the last chunk of time we had available. This is what can be done if you only have 30 minutes or so.

Using a Viewfinder

A student is checking out various possibilities to draw with his viewfinder.

A straight-on view challenge

This is a straight-on foreshortened view of the train signal sculpture that one student brought up as an example of a perspective she found challenging to draw.

A quick sketch

A student asked how I would handle drawing from a certain straight on, foreshortened perspective of the train signal sculpture. This is my quick attempt at it.