We’ve just wrapped up a fun week of sketching with shapes as part of the Group Run-through of Foundations. This is a favourite subject of mine as starting my sketches with shapes is a big part of my work.

This week in Lesson 3 we looked at three important ways of using shapes:

1. combining similar coloured areas into simple shapes
2. using negative shapes to define form
3. mapping light and dark

Here are some of my shape-based sketches from this week.

A collection of shapes (without any desire for accuracy) of the boring building I often sketch while sipping my morning coffee.

A dark brick church on a wet morning.

A paint-only shape-based sketch of the church doorway that I have sketched many times. I like the ‘happy accident’ that happened with the pink flowers in the garden bed.

A few tree shapes.

A Mosman house sketched before an appointment. Oh! by the way, I’m now using a smaller Spiral Alpha – this is the 7×10.

   
A paint-only Lane Cove sketch on an overcast day.

On the left, I have marked up the shapes I saw and on the right the same scene the next day (when the sun was out) with coloured pencil shapes. (Note: the concepts from this sketch are explained in the Edges course Lesson 1 and 2)

A quick loose interpretation of the indoor exercise for Lesson 3. I thought I would try the Eradicator to lift some paint and restore a white shape that I lost… but I was a little aggressive and took away the surface of the paper!

  
Doing a few sketches of letterboxes as part of the outdoor prompt for Lesson 3. It was so much fun to do these and I want to do a few more.

And finally…

I hope all my Australian friends had a lovely Australia Day holiday!

As it was more or less a normal workday for me (including a Foundations Livestream this morning) I ended up doing my usual weekday visit to Lane Cove National Park. I timed my visit later than usual (around 4:30 pm) but the park was still very busy.  It was nice to chill and do this sketch surrounded by the sounds of picnicking people and the aroma of a nearby BBQ.

And yes, this is not a shape-based sketch like the others in this article… although I did think about shapes at the start. 🙂

It’s been so much fun to abstract shapes this week and I’m looking forward to switching gears again and starting to construct volumes from tomorrow.