Exercise 1 Sketchbook of Townscape drawings
During a day out in St Albans Market Place I made a variety of different sketches in pencil of buildings in the Market Place area. The Market Place area has a combination of Tudor buildings and modern day ones. I did focus on the Tudor building as it’s quite an interesting shape.
In my sketchbook I made some notes on colour, Market Place had blues, blacks, whites, reds, greys and greens. It was a clear sunny day, then became slightly overcast, Time about 11 am, a few people around, but otherwise quiet. One or two vehicles parked, but usually it’s a limited parking area. There were some deep shadows on one side of the street. The Gables building has a traditional black and white facade, with glass shop fronts and a door in the middle. Tiled roof with over hanging guttering painted black.
My final drawings I made on one sheet of paper, that can go inside a sketchbook. I drew an old Tudor building called The Gables, now a shop called Jack Wills.
The picture below shows how I drew some details in squares and then made some further sketches of the building, including a side view.
Exercise 2 Study of a townscape using line
In my sketchbook I drew a section from The Gables building going up the street in the Market Place, using my sketches and some photos as reference, I drew with a fine black pen. Whats nice about a fine pen is the detail you can get. So I added tiles and shading to create shadows. I also cropped the drawing, which I think is a better composition.
Exercise 3 Limited palette study
I re-drew The Gables building in ink and painted it with three watercolour colours, Sepia, Ochre and Black, using the white of the paper for my lightest colour. I chose a side view as it showed more of the building’s windows and shape.
Exercise 4 Statues
St Albans is lacking in statues, so I drew some from a recent visit to London, The British Museum and some small stone statues at a local garden centre.
Looking at statues at my local garden centre, I drew these small stone statues quickly with a black Sharpie Pen, just shading in with loose lines the shadows and grooves.
I also did some quick sketching of famous women statues, found around London. I painted over my lines with Paynes Grey watercolour washes to capture the deep dark shadows. I thought they looked quite ghostly.
Finally I drew some Greek statues found in The British Museum. This time I drew in pencil on a coffee ground background.
Ann Marie Varnam Drawing 1 Blog 