If the blank white page feels intimidating, one exercise that can help is to add color first. As you apply the color, it will help dictate the mood of the sketch. This is also a really good loosening-up exercise, and some experienced sketchers use it to excellent effect.
ADELINA PINTEA
MOSI, Manchester, England
For this sketch of a courtyard area at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry (above), Adelina Pintea applied the color first. She splashed on big splodges of red paint, some blue in the approximate location of the sky, and some yellow highlights. This gave her a textured backdrop for her sketch, and made her less precise when drawing. It gives the finished sketch an upbeat, quirky feel. You can tell that Adelina is an accomplished children’s book illustrator, with such interesting and fun touches as the birds flying overhead and the details of pebbles and railings. What I like so much about this is that it really tells the story of its location, and in such a happy way.
LYNNE CHAPMAN
Nether Edge, Sheffield, England
When drawing manmade structures, Lynne Chapman likes to lay watercolor shapes down first, keeping them deliberately rough (above). “The mismatch with the subsequent linework creates a dynamism that is far harder to achieve if you add color afterward.”
Chicago, Dubai, Liverpool—in the twentieth century, many cities became identified by their skyline. The rise and fall of roof profiles can be a city’s signature.
A single roof can provide the focal point of a sketch on a smaller scale, too, as here. This pitched roof (probably Victorian or Edwardian) epitomizes English suburbia. I particularly enjoy focusing on chimneys, aerials and satellite masts, and the way that they are silhouetted on the skyline above the roofscape, because they can convey such a sense of place.