Urban Sketching in Cambrils, Spain

Over the last month, I did a lot of sketching while we were traveling in Europe.  I painted too, of course, but there were often times when painting simply wasn't an option-- at the beach, killing time at an airport or train station, mornings at coffee, etc.  That's when sketching stepped in.

Sketching serves a few functions for me.  One, I enjoy paying attention.  Two, it helps me begin the process of reducing the onslaught of detail real life provides, as I decide what I think is important enough to include in a painting.  I compress various values into a smaller range, I combine objects, I find silhouettes, I edit and crop.  Even so, I often include more info in a drawing than I do in a painting, and the sketch seems to help me get that "bug" out of my system, as I boil the image down to more of its essentials.  Three, I'm still working on drawing Alvaro's almost ridiculous, off the cuff declaration that we "draw 2000 figures and then get back to (him)".  Each page is about 20 figures, and I did about 200 before I went on the trip, and 200 while on the trip.  Only 1600 more to go!  LOL!  :D

To give you a sense of what I've been doing, most figures take about 20- 60 seconds. I'm most interested in body posture, and how it expresses a mood, situation, or interaction between people.  I even got Tasha to do some sketching too!  :D