My hubby and I have recently been doing urban sketching together. We’re at an interesting point in our lives in which we’re incredibly busy intermixed with periods of wait-and-see inactivity. To make use of our anxiety energy, we decided to get creative. In my recent blog The Magic of the Blending Pencil I talk about how we went to Yorktown, Virginia and created sketches side by side.

It’s great having a companion “artist” (neither of us are formally trained), a lot like having a friend to exercise with. You’re more likely to show up and follow through as well as have a good time. There’s a friendly competition that has occurred between us, and we support each other with genuine admiration as well as helpful, constructive criticism.

We have our sketching stuff wherever we go now. The other day, after running a couple of errands in our small tidewater town here in Virginia, we decided that we should make use of the sunny, mild weather and do some sketching.

On our way out of town to go home we pass Parker’s Marina and on impulse we turned into its gravel lot to see what we could find to sketch.

Below are photos I took of the two scenes I sketched as we sat in our car–the upper one was taken through the windshield and the lower through the driver’s side window. I take photos of what I sketch so that I can do tweaking at home if I need to.

I liked the top scene because I thought it was interesting—the Downing Bridge in the distance, the tree line, the sea grasses, the three boats on their trailers and the gravel of the lot in the foreground. And in the lower scene, I liked the rustic simplicity of the two small structures.

Below is what I sketched in my sketchbook.

I started with a pencil, but I moved to pen pretty quickly. As I said in my last blog, I’m trying to go straight to pen like urban sketch artists I’ve watched on YouTube.

Initially, I was worried about not knowing anything about the anatomy of boats. But then I remembered YouTube artist Becky Cao’s advice: look at the parts of your scene as simply shapes. She says to tell yourself you’re drawing a rectangle, a circle, a bunch of squares, etc., and don’t let yourself even think about the name of what you’re drawing. I’ve found that this works for me—for example, I just focused on drawing the curvy shape on the side of the boat on the left, and didn’t think of it as part of a boat’s hull.

I didn’t have the supplies to add color to my sketches as we sat there, so I took the photos for reference before we drove away.

Below is my first pass at color using my small Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor travel set and water brushes.

I purposely increased the saturation of some of the colors. That’s part of the fun of creating art–interpreting a scene in your own unique style.

I was aggravated when I saw that the pen I used bled when I applied the watercolors—yet another YouTube artist stated in one of her videos that this type of pen doesn’t smear or bleed when watercolors are used on top of it. On my sketchbook page it’s especially noticeable in the lettering at the top. Oh well, live and learn.

I liked the vibrancy that the colors gave to my sketches but felt that they could be improved upon. Below are the images after I added a little more color with colored pencils:

I encourage anybody who wants to create art but worries about expensive supplies and/or “I’m not good enough” to consider sketchbooking.

I’m having more fun “arting” than ever before because I’m not trying to create a finished piece of art on canvas or expensive high-quality watercolor paper. The images that I create are more like simple illustrations than fine art, and I like that.

I now ease into starting a drawing by telling myself that I’m just doodling in a sketchbook. This gives me permission to draw and paint things I’d be too intimidated to try with my higher end art supplies.

Recently, we returned to Yorktown and drew at the Watermen’s Museum there. I’ll show you my efforts in my next blog, and if I can talk him into it, I’ll show you my husband’s as well. 🙂