Along with all the other projects and regular commitments that you see me doing (teaching, writing, sketching, scanning, filming and video editing etc) I am also working hard behind the scenes on SketchingNow stuff and planning some significant improvements in 2017.

Last week one of the tasks I performed was collecting still shots from every video in all my courses. It was a big job, so I thought it might be fun to share a collage of Foundations demonstrations – most but not all of them!

SketchingNow Foundations covers the essential concepts for urban sketching and helps you develop your own style and gain confidence to sketch on location. The goal is to build a strong foundation of skills that you can continue to develop over the years and come back to time and time again. If you missed it yesterday, I wrote an article about how I used these concepts when teaching architects.

SketchingNow Foundations has been designed to help you to do the following:

Know and love the materials in your kit so that you can get the most of them.

Begin to see the world differently, in a way that will make it easier to sketch any subject – to feel edges, abstract shapes and construct volumes.

Develop strategies for different ways of starting a sketch and ways of improving accuracy – doing pencil setup vs drawing directly in ink.

Discover multiple ways of using line and colour and alternatives for creating texture.

Compose and frame sketches out on location, using a view finder and the rule of thirds.

Explore different responses to a scene through thumbnails and as a result create a sketch with a strong story.

Sketch more spontaneously by working out from a focus and having the confidence to work in a busy cafe surrounded by people.

In addition to these demos (and a few I haven’t shown you) there is a lot of written content in each lesson (well over 100 pages of downloadable PDF files) with lots of diagrams and examples of my urban sketches using the same principles.

Unlike a traditional drawing course where you might spend hours on a single drawing and trying to make it as good as possible, SketchingNow Foundations is all about building visual skills by numerous 30-minute exercises. Each lesson builds on the previous so you will see a real progression in your skills, begin to see your style emerging and develop a sketching a habit over a three month period.

To enroll or find out more about Foundations please click here.

Please let me know if you have any questions.