Tag: #uskathome

A Guide to Our Living Room, and the steps it took to get there…

~ stephanieabower ~ 2 Comments

As primarily a travel sketcher who is now stuck at home on Day 47, I’m finally turning my sights to drawing our house. What started as a simple sketch of our small living room turned into creating a way to identify beloved objects, a road may for our kids who some day may want to know what all this stuff is and where it came from. (I’ve instructed them not to sell the watercolor paintings and my brushes at a yard sale!)
And since I was sketching at home, I had the luxury of being able to stop and start, and to scan various phases of the sketch. I LOVED the line drawing and hesitated to add any color at all, but then took the plunge and added a little underpainting to establish the voids or recessed spaces. Finally, more color, although I tried to restrain myself and leave a lot of white to give a sense of the sunlight.
In the end, my favorite is the underpainted version, and the kind folks who responded to my Instagram post helped me figure out why (most liked the full color version, by the way.) I like the unfinished quality of the sketch at that point, the areas that are left white feel fresh. It’s a painting of potential, one that doesn’t overpower the line drawing I really liked and didn’t want to lose with too much paint (which happens all too often!)
How about you, which version do you like best?

And the steps:

1–Initial rough sketch blocking out the big shapes. You can see my vanishing point right in front of me, and my eye level line drawn all the way across the page. I didn’t erase any of these lines, other than moving the Eames chair, I drew right over them.

2– Completed line drawing. I love being able to se all the little details! I added the text.

3– Underpainting, it’s my way of easing into the painting by dipping my toe in first. Cool colors show the recesses, the warm colors advance.

4–Full color, but a muted palette so I don’t cover up too much of the lines I love. I tried to restrain from painting too much, by leaving areas of the paper white to show sunlight.

This post also appears on the Urban Sketchers blog at http://www.urbansketchers.org.

6. Kitchen Greens.

~ stephanieabower ~ 8 Comments

I confess, I was holding off on my pandemic sketching. I don’t know why, maybe it’s lack of ability to focus, or maybe feeling overwhelmed by life these days, even though things are radically simplified by staying at home. I’ve never felt more grateful for a roof over my head and food in the fridge.

Yesterday, however, I finally jumped in to the Urban Sketchers group on Instagram at #uskathome this with this sketch. I had to capture those orange flowers in the bright light, as their tropical colors cheer me up every day as they over-winter in the only sunny window in our house.

And since we’ve been talking about starting with big shapes, can you figure out which shapes I drew first to set up the sketch?

I had to redraw these shapes a second time to get them the right size and location on my paper. Those first boxes determine everything! If you are sketching indoors during this pandemic, please consider posting your sketches to Instagram at #uskathome. More blog posts to come, how to find the vanishing point is coming up…stay tuned!