Sargent: the building is a pattern of light.
A close look at Abriès, and a lesson in deciding which edges deserve the brush.
Read & try it ↗The looking room
Look slowly. Borrow a question.
Nine historical works, from a timber building to a Mexican broadside. Different media and purposes; useful ways to think about drawing places.
Morisot: an interior is a place too.
Sewing near the Window makes attention, light and everyday work a serious subject.
Read & try it ↗
Cotman: a building before the brickwork.
Farm Building by a Pond and the strength of a few joined shapes.
Read & try it ↗
Posada: the street has something to say.
The Skeleton of the Buses puts people, transport and printed words on the same crowded page.
Read & try it ↗
Velasco: look beyond the next building.
A view of the Valley of Mexico asks how a place sits within a larger landscape.
Read & try it ↗
Winslow Homer: let the paper be light.
Fishing Boats, Key West offers a lesson in white shapes that have something to do.
Read & try it ↗
Thomas Girtin: small figures, big place.
A castle, a cliff and a few people who quietly explain the scale.
Read & try it ↗
Turner: give the distance some air.
The Lake of Zug and a useful question about how much information a distant shape needs.
Read & try it ↗
Sargent: sketching the sketchers.
In the Generalife shows people, place and the act of looking sharing one page.
Read & try it ↗Sketchers working now.
Follow contemporary teachers to their own work and try a focused exercise.
Liz Steel: looking is the work.
A contemporary sketcher’s encouragement to begin, and a small exercise in paying attention.
Read & try it ↗
Teoh Yi Chie: give a busy scene a structure.
Learning from a generous public teaching practice, then trying the problem in your own street.
Read & try it ↗
Gabriel Campanario: the drawing reports.
A founder’s work offers a useful question: what does the page tell us about this place?
Read & try it ↗
Shari Blaukopf: colour has structure.
Look at the whole arrangement before getting distracted by a lovely bit of paint.
Read & try it ↗Suhita Shirodkar: people doing things.
A figure becomes more informative when it has a relationship with the place.
Read & try it ↗
Stephanie Bower: space before detail.
Perspective becomes useful when it explains a place you actually want to draw.
Read & try it ↗
Marc Taro Holmes: let the brush begin.
Explore direct watercolour as a different set of decisions, rather than a shortcut around drawing.
Read & try it ↗
Maru Godàs: colour gets some room.
A reminder that an observed place can support more than one visual language.
Read & try it ↗
Lapin: the page can wander.
Follow a subject across a sketchbook without forcing everything into one polite rectangle.
Read & try it ↗Your turn
A page of your own. A story to add.
Show your sketch, ask a question or tell us what you noticed. There’s room for the wonky windows too.
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