The Day in Sketches

Many websites bring you "The Day in Photos." The project I'm launching today aims to show "The Day in Sketches" instead.

Monday through Friday, I plan to curate a timely slideshow of quality sketches that capture slices of life and current events around the globe.

My goal is to create a pictorial report that meets this criteria:

• Timeliness: I'd like to include sketches drawn in the last 24 hours, but this may be tough at first. If I can't find optimum sketches drawn within that time frame, I'll aim for the most recent drawings available.
• Newsworthiness: I'll be seeking sketches that reflect subjects of special interest or importance.
• Geographic and cultural diversity: I want the sketches to take me to places I've never been and introduce me to cultures I know little about.

If you like the idea, please give it a shout via Facebook or Twitter. You may also email me your flickr username if you'd like to be part of the group of artists whose work I'll follow as I make selections for the slideshow. If you are not on flickr, email me a link to your blog.

Handy-dandy grid cards for urban sketching via Kickstarter

Watch Steve Worthington pitch his Kickstarter project.

How do you figure out the composition of a sketch when you are drawing in the field? Framing a scene may become intuitive with years of experience, but some tools can make the job easier.

Steve Worthington, a British-born storyboard artist and sculptor based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has come up with a brilliant device that makes measuring and composing sketches on the go much easier: artist grid-cards.

The wallet-size cards seem a step up from similar devices I've seen sketchers use, such as slide frames or do-it-yourself cardboard visors. They are made of transparent plastic and printed with grids of squares and rectangles that are perfect for measuring proportions.

As many artists are doing these days, Steve is crowdfunding his project through Kickstarter. And things are going well so far. Though the deadline to pledge money for his project is still several weeks away, he has already raised more than three times of his goal of $700.

Steve recommends Kickstarter to other artists, especially if you do at least some of your work in a medium that is expensive to produce. "I’ve learned that if you have an audience of people, from blogging or selling online, that appreciates your work, it’s much easier to get new stuff off the ground when you can offer it to them at the special first-time rate prior to putting it in galleries and up online for regular sales," Steve said via email.

You can get your hands on a set of these handy-dandy drawing tools by pledging $10 on Steve's Kickstarter page. I can't wait to get mine!

Extra
Steve was doing a bit of his own urban sketching —iPhone sketches of cars— when he had the idea of the cards. Here's how it happened, in his own words:

"I came up with the idea for the grid cards while I was waiting outside Sprouts (a supermarket) for my wife whose dithering I am most grateful for on that occasion!! Not exactly beautiful drawings on my iPhone (I was using the first incarnation of the app ‘Brushes’), but they spawned a neat idea!!"

Twitterville

Though I joined Twitter what seems like eons ago, only in the last weeks I've begun composing 140-character messages in earnest. I've even spent $1.99 for an app that lets me browse through the lists of people I follow in my iPhone (sketchers/artists, journalists, Seattle media, etc...) It's called Echofon, and it's making the experience much more worth my time.

For a while, I mostly used Twitter to post photos of my sketches -- how cool is it to live-tweet a sketch in progress, huh? But, lately, I'm beginning to converse with others via Twitter as well -- I think that's what I was missing! I'm getting to know my tweeps better and I don't feel like I'm shouting into the ether anymore.

In addition to the "look-at-what-I'm-sketching-now" posts, I'm also sharing more links and re-tweeting other people's messages. It feels good to draw attention to work other than my own.

Here are some of those links I shared this week:

I'd go see this if I could: The Art of Daniel Clowes at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Opens June 29
http://mcachicago.org/exhibitions/next/all/319

Poignant sketch of @FDNY's Engine 55 by Vancouver sketcher Don McNulty
http://www.flickr.com/photos/donmcn/8969129961/

Matthew Cencich organizes exhibit of sketchbooks in Victoria, BC
http://www.urbansketchers.org/2013/06/urban-sketchers-exhibit-at-my-local.html?spref=tw

The City of Seattle Municipal Archives on flickr. Does your city do something like this. What a great source of sketching ideas
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattlemunicipalarchives

Michel Longuet and Simo Capecchi sketchwalk in Paris. I bought Longuet's book too
http://www.urbansketchers.org/2013/06/adresses-fantomes-michel-longuet.html?spref=tw

The DIY sketchbooks of Jessie Chapman
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessiecchapman/sets/72157634028935819/

What the Flickr? I thought this redesign would never happen, but I'm glad it did

Flickr, the image-sharing website where I've been uploading and sharing my artwork since 2007, implemented a major redesign last week.

Wired Magazine called it "slick" and "photo-rific," but many artists who also use it to share drawings aren't happy. They say it is a "nightmare." Some are so upset that they are circulating petitions to Marissa Mayer, CEO of parent company Yahoo, to Change Flickr Back!.

Is the new design really worse than good old clunky Flickr already was?

To form my own opinion and perhaps offer some perspective, I looked for old pages via Wayback Machine and assembled some before-and-after comparisons.

I think the changes are an improvement. I would never go back to the previous look, where thumbnails dominated most pages and forced you to click to see every image. I love how the photostream pages look now, with images filling up the screen. The black background on image pages makes the artwork standout, though it'd be nice if users could customize it with their color of choice.

Flickr looked the same for so long, I worried it would get sold or shut down. Now, that would have been really upsetting!

The redesign proves that the site is alive, and that makes me happy.

PHOTOSTREAM PAGE



IMAGE PAGE



GROUPS PAGE

The future of illustration?

This week's New Yorker arrived with an interesting surprise: two variants of the same cover:

The printed one.

And a bonus interactive version with the iPad download.



The interactive version was fun to play with. I spent a minute or two making that wheel drop a bunch of apples on Newton's head.

This is the kind of stuff that my kids take for granted. But, to this 43-year-old, it still feels a bit like science-fiction -- I can make the artwork come alive with my fingertip!

I thought, is this the future of illustration?

Not really, it is the present.

The cover, titled "Eureka!" is by illustrator Christoph Niemann. Where did his inspiration come from? See his step-by-step visual explanation and the cover artwork in motion here.

Keri Smith: "Perspective is everything."

What stood out from my Internet consumption this week, visually speaking:

1. A charming and thought-provoking set of hand-drawn signs by guerrilla artist Keri Smith, of Wreck This Journal fame.

By Keri Smith

The captions Keri writes for each sign on flickr are just as good if not better. "Move over a little bit," reads the one for the sign above. I'm going to remember that, not just for sketching, for anything.

If we all "moved over a little bit," instead of being set in our own ways, we'd see things differently. We'd be more open-minded and tolerant, wouldn't we? Perspective is everything.

2. Fifteen cartoons that changed the world, some of them inked more than 100 years ago. [Via Cartoon Movement.] Powerful stuff ... Share it with anyone who may think cartoons are silly or irrelevant!

3. A post on Craftsy.com by Paul Heaston on how to draw those ellusive ellipses. That's how it's done!

Keys to Drawing

I often check out art instruction books from my neighborhood library. But I never spend enough time with any one in particular before they are due back. Keys to Drawing, however, has me hooked from the start. I'm enjoying it so much I may just end up buying a copy to own.

Dodson emphasizes a fundamental principle: Drawing what we see, not what we know. Such simple advice, right? Yet it doesn't get old. Trust your eyes, he says, and spend more time looking at the subject than at the paper.

"Our goal in drawing from observation is to capture the richness and variety of the visual experience. We should draw, for the time being at least, as if we know nothing, and were obedient to only to what our eye tell us to draw."

In other words, forget that people's heads are positioned above their shoulders (what we know.) If the person we are drawing is bent foreward and looking down, that anatomical knowledge won't help. Just draw what you see.

Or forget that hands have five fingers. Try drawing your hand with your fingers pointing directly at you and think only about shapes, lines and angles. Below is my own result from doing that exercise suggested by Dodson. (In case you are curious, the unrelated sketch on the top left is my son looking at the iPad.)

Here's another excerpt of great advice to cope with the frustations that often arise in the process of drawing:

"At each point of frustration or confusion, ask yourself: What do I see?"

The journalistic illustrations of Robert Weaver

The late Robert Weaver is known for his journalistic approach to illustration. The artwork he published in magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Life and Esquire was based on sketches he drew on the field.

This week I especially thought of Weaver's work when I was making some behind-the-scenes sketches of Opening Day at Safeco Field for my Seattle Times column. Back in 1962, Sports Illustrated sent him to Florida to cover spring training and he produced a series of paintings for the magazine (see a tearsheet in this post on D. B. Dowd's blog Graphic Tales.) Above is a screengrab of a slideshow of his spring training sketches published by the New York Times in 2008.

The idea of creating new images based on my sketches had never crossed my mind until I discovered Weaver's work. Now I can't wait to give it a try.

Here's my list of links to Weaver's work so far:

• Leif Peng: Rober Weaver flickr set
• Today's Inspiration: The incursion of the Avant-garde: Robert Weaver
• Today's Inspiration: Robert Weaver: "It was the ponytail period in American culture."
• Today's Inspiration: Robert Weaver The anti-Wyeth
• Today's Inspiration: Robert Weaver: "Illustration is an essential to a great painting."
• Today's Inspiration: Robert Weaver: "The artist... should be the reactor.".
• Today's Inspiration: Robert Weaver: "I saw illustration as a real calling."
• Graphic Tales: Drawing Lines––Robert Weaver at Olin Library
• Graphic Tales: Robert Weaver, ACL Game 7 special
• Graphic Tales: Super Tuesday: Robert Weaver's Kennedy Suite
• Graphic Witness: Robert Weaver
• Art Directors Club: 1990 Hall of Fame Special Award
• PourPorter: American illustrator Rober Weaver
• Washington University St. Louis: The Work of Robert Weaver, by Noah MacMillan
• New York Times: Spring training sketches slideshow.
• New York Times: Obituary

And here's a pic from one of my sketches in progress last Monday during Opening Day. Drawn from Safeco Field's press box.

The Melton Prior Institute for Reportage Drawing & Printing Culture

I recently discovered the existence of an institute dedicated to reportage drawing: The Melton Prior Institute.

It is named after Melton Prior, an English artist who worked for the London Illustrated News back in the days before photography, when newspapers relied on artists to produce visual records of news events.

The institute's website is a gold mine of resources about illustrated newspapers, war artists, reportage illustrators and graphic arts in general.

Artists keen on the narrative powers of illustration will enjoy digging deeper into the site. It's a real time sink, but certainly inspirational for those of us who work in the crossroads of art and journalism.

The Melton Prior Institute also has a page on Facebook. I hope it gets a few more likes after this post!

Drawn together in North Carolina

Meeting fellow urban sketchers when you are away from home can be a very rewarding experience.

I recently met two of them during my spring break vacation in North Carolina: Jessie Chapman, an architect from Charlottesville I first met at the Santo Domingo Urban Sketching Symposium last summer; and Steven White, a web designer from Blacksburg, Virginia.

Though it was only the second time I met Jessie in person and the first time I ever shook hands with Steven, the connection was instantaneous. It felt like meeting dear cousins or old college friends.

Steven was just as funny and genuine as I expected — I've known him since the early days of the Urban Sketchers flickr group. "C'mon, give me a hug!" he said in the characteristic friendly style of his online persona, "SketchySteven," as soon as he saw me. And Jessie was just as excited as Steven and I about our little sketching meetup, which took place under beautiful sunny skies and pleasant spring temperatures.

The meeting location was Statesville, a small town about an hour north of Charlotte where my brother-in-law, Jeff Archer, opened his mountain bike shop more than two decades ago.



Jeff's First Flight Bicycles business now occupies a historic building in the heart of the city and attracts customers from all over the region and beyond. Sketchers? Not so much. That's probably why he tipped off a local newspaper reporter who promptly showed up to interview us for this story.

After a quick lunch, we set out to sketch across the bike shop as Jeff was busy attending customers who pop up from everywhere. For instance, a New Yorker who took a detour on his trip back home from Florida just to visit the bike shop; and a father and son from Charlotte who spent three hours browsing the shop and Jeff's collection of vintage bicycles, also known as the Museum of Mountain Bike Art and Technology.



The bike shop and other impressive buildings in downtown Statesville kept us busy sketching all afternoon. Then we wrapped up the day in typical sketcher fashion, having a drink at a local bar, the Wine Maestro, that Jeff recommended.

If you ever find yourself near Statesville, make sure to stop by First Flight Bikes and get a sketch or two done along South Center Street. Like Jessie said, it's a town that ranks high in "sketchability."