Virtual Sketchwalk

During a sketchwalk you walk around a certain place and stop here and there to make a sketch on location. Often people meet somewhere to do this together. But drawing on location is not for everyone. You often don't have a convenient place to sit down. Not everyone can stand for longer periods of time. Or you just are not comfortable drawing in public.

With a virtual sketchwalk you use photos or Google Street View and do your 'walk' from the comfort of your home or studio. You choose a certain place or topic to explore and draw from (copyright-free) photos you find online or make some from Street View. Of course, you can also include your own photos.

Like the 'real thing', this is even more fun when you do it in a group. You can provide your own photos to the group and draw from the photos other members provide. There is a Facebook group I have joined not long ago. We work on a different topic every month. Last month it was Ireland. This month it's flowers. The group is organised by Kate Powell. If you feel like this is something for you, come and join us.

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Sketch & Note

It's always great when you have finished a sketchbook and a new sketchbook is in front of you waiting to be started. It's especially exciting when the new one is a type you haven't used before. I've just started one of my new Sketch & Note sketchbooks - or rather sketch booklets - by Hahnemühle. They come in bundles of two with colourful covers and 40 pages each. The paper is rather smooth with a fine texture and weighs 125 gsm. The tools I prefer to work with are pencils, coloured pencils and ink. I do a preliminary drawing with pencil, then go over it with ink, adding also a bit of hatching where necessary, and then colour with coloured pencils. This paper seems to suit all these tools very well. It's smooth enough for good ink lines, but also has enough texture for the coloured pencils. I like to colour rather lightly, not minding some paper white showing through. Though, I'm sure if you want to get rid of it, that won't be a problem with this ...

Photorealism

Many people feel honoured when their drawing or painting is mistaken for a photo. Well, sometimes it happens unintentionally. But there are artists who strive for photorealism. They think it's the greatest achievement to be able to make a drawing or painting look like it is a photo, even to be able to literally copy a photo by drawing or painting it. I don't think so. Nowadays, if your goal is to depict something as true to reality as possible, you can take a photo and that's it. Easy. So why would you learn to draw or paint, just to make your drawing (or painting) look like a photo? That doesn't make sense to me. I want my drawings to be something different, something more than photos are. The most important thing about drawing is the fun you have while doing it. But as far as the result is concerned, I want my drawings to have a character of their own, a different character than a photo has. At least, I want them to look like drawings. With this in mind, drawin...

Lack of inspiration

I haven't written here for a while. Nothing exciting has happened since the Craftsy course. Nothing to write about. I have done one or the other drawing since then, but nothing for the last two weeks, except some hatching exercises. It's the same old story. I want to draw, but don't know what. I still don't subscribe to the idea that everything is interesting when you draw it, so draw anything. I need a concept, a theme, a subject with a meaning to me. I don't visit exciting places often or buy interesting new stuff. So what to draw when there is nothing like this to be inspired by? It's so frustrating to always have to search for a subject. I'm preparing next month's subject for the Virtual Sketchwalk group, a topic I am really interested in right now, so hopefully I will be occupied with it next month. But what until then and what after that? I need to solve this riddle, because I love to draw and I love to see another drawing emerge in my sketc...

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