New Sketches

Over the past week I have been working through a new class that I have taken from House Sketcher. It is all about drawing buildings with character and a bit of quirkiness. Learning to loosen up and not worry about straight lines. This is really hard for me because I went to art and designs school and was taught to draw buildings with a pencil and ruler in hand to make sure all of the lines were perfectly straight. 

What drew me to this class was the idea of learning to loosen up and let go of perfection and just have fun. 

The supplies that I used for these are pretty simple: (affiliate links used) 

• A handmade by me sketchbook 
• Tombow Pencil to do sketch
• Faber-Castel Fineliner pen to ink 
• Faber-Castel Pitt Artist Brush pens pastels
• Faber-Castel Pitt Artist Brush pens shades of gray

I picked some images from Unsplash and have really been enjoying the process. I am doing one a day and I hope to fill this sketchbook up and also improve my skills over time. There are 60 pages in this book so I think I will have a good amount of practice in it. 

I have been working on them each night after I get finished with dinner as a way to unwind for the day. 

This page is a pretty famous set of buildings in France and I know that I have seen a few different versions of pictures of these buildings and the shop in the building on right has been many different shops over the years. 

This second drawing was fun to draw. The building was actually in between two other buildings and so I decided that it would be more interesting if I only drew the one building as a stand alone. I added some bushes along the sides to help ground the image. I thing that this one is located in Europe but I can't remember. I'm not really trying for an accurate representation of the building but an illustration that is inspired by the location.  

I really think of this style as a cross between urban sketching and illustration. 

The third building should let you know that I have a fascination with European and British buildings. I love the old school architecture.  This one was also a building surrounded by buildings and I wanted to really focus on just one and not a whole row of buildings. I'm not saying that I won't do a whole row of buildings at some point, but right now I just want to do one per page. 

I really enjoyed making this one a little more wonky by skewing the shutters and the dormers on the roof. 

I hadn't planned on drawing any people with the buildings but this one was too funny not to. The guy is dressed like "Where's Waldo" so I had to keep him in the illustration. This is Corfe Castle train station in Surrey, England. Corfe is pronounced with the "e" silent. I was drawing this one during an art meet up I have with my friend April @MonkeyMintaka on Instagram and Youtube, so she let me in on the correct pronunciation of the word. I don't know if I like all the blue that I put in for the sky but that is what made me want to draw this. the blue sky just surrounded the place.  

For the first one of September I decided that I would find an interesting building in the United States and draw it. So this is the one I choose. It is one of the famous pink houses in Charleston, South Carolina. I really like that the roof was a tile roof and that it looked like it had lost of different colors and texture all over the house. I added the wonky shutter idea to this one to give it a more lively feeling. 

For all of these I have used the same collection of supplies and it has been a challenge because I normally like to try to use everything. Using a limited color palette and limited number of supplies was one of the things in the class as well. I am taking this challenge and I hope it will help me to grow my skills. 

PS. I launched my new online shop this week. You can find it here. 

See you next time, and thanks for stopping by.

Here is a link to my Pinterest Board for Sketchbook Inspiration