A Sketchbook of Townscape Drawings P.93

A Sketchbook of Townscape Drawings P.93 

I was fortunate enough to have a selection of studies to choose from in this exercise. Back in Sept, knowing that the Assignment of working outdoors was coming up, I had the opportunity to go to Warwick Castle where I was able to do a few sketches as well as take photos for future reference.

Warwick Castle : 2nd Sept 2012, 20 min sketch

Tower at Warwick Castle: 2nd Sept 2012

More recently, I chose to sketch a shopping centre, in Burton town centre.

I think my aim in doing this landscape as part of the exercise was to try and capture an emotion from drawing, and to focus on a busy shopping centre, around Christmas time, seemed like a good choice to provoke a response. I had a level of securing, sketching from inside of a car, but still, I remember suffering social anxiety in my teens and this is a situation I would find quite stressful. It reminded me of a time when I did not feel part of the moving social world, kind of separated from it all, and to observe and sketch the thing I would of found uncomfortable of years ago was unusual, but because I felt quite comfortable, it left me feeling empowered.

I do like this sketch, particularly the busy shoppers, which reminds me of Pissaro's series work with The Boulevard Montmartre and if I were to do a full sized study of it, I would have create character in it by adding stressed out shoppers.


Completely opposite to the previous sketch, here I referred back to the sketch I did in The sketchbook walk , only this time, I used a photo as a loose colour reference to create a watercolor piece.  I remember that the day was quite dull when I did the original sketch with quite an uninteresting sky, so I wanted to brighten this picture up with lots of warmer colours.