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Outdoor Sketching Essentials
Whether you’re a seasoned landscape architect or new to urban sketching, Blick is your source for on-location drawing essentials. From best-in-class mechanical pencils to scale model building materials and beyond, find everything you need to get out of the studio and into your creative element.
What is Outdoor Sketching?
The urban sketching movement is a global community of artists who share a passion for sketching on location in urban environments. Founded as a grassroots movement the mid-2000s, urban sketchers gather both online and in person to sketch and share their work.
Characterized by a journalistic emphasis on drawing from direct observation, individual style is celebrated. Urban sketchers use a variety of media, creating a rich record of urban life through their art.
On-Location Sketching Essentials
Drawing & Illustration Markers
Drawing & Sketching Pencils
Water-Soluble Supplies
Watercolor Paint Sets
Travel & Pocket Paint Brushes
Sketchbooks
Interview: Landscape Architect Chip Sullivan
Artist, landscape architect, and UC Berkeley professor Chip Sullivan has devoted his decades-long career to promoting landscape architecture as an art form. The philosophy and application of sustainable design has been a guiding principle in his teachings and graphic work, which explores the delicate balance between humans and nature.
How does drawing by hand contribute to a deeper understanding of architectural concepts?
When you draw something, you become part of it. The subject you are drawing gets digested, reformed, and transmitted via your drawing instrument.
A drawing results from a process that develops over time, bringing attention to the components that contribute to the integrity of a design. Drawing can build comprehension of underlying structures, whether conceptual or material, by observing how individual elements function spatially. The great Renaissance architects went to Rome with a pencil and a notebook.
Urban sketching is interpreting, recording, observing, and reacting to the landscape; it is a direct translation of information. In urban sketching you are trying to capture the total environment of the city. The artist is part of the weave.
Architectural drafting and design is a rigorous process where accuracy is paramount. In this process of creativity and imagination, one must be able to represent the structure as it will be constructed. Architectural field sketching is trying to understand through analysis the harmonic proportions and organizational framework of the constructed work.
Mass/void relationships, ornamentation, and scale are common to both graphic investigations.
What are the advantages of sketching by hand compared to using digital tools in your work?
Drawing by hand is direct, immediate, palpable. Drawing is an act of seeing, a form of meditation, and a transcendental experience; in a sense you become one with your subject. Drawing is an exploration of the unknown. You can inhabit the images as you draw them and impart a life into what you are creating.
The process is physical, involving both gross and fine motor skills; the medium is responsive. Studies have shown that drawing, particularly in the form of visual notetaking, increases comprehension of material and helps give meaning to content. Drawing connects the hand, the eye, and the brain. Digital tools prize efficiency. There is a technological interface between the designer and the creative product that in my opinion distances one from the work. The result becomes an abstraction, and lacks the intimate, spiritual connection with the creative process.
Digital tools prize efficiency. There is a technological interface between the designer and the creative product that in my opinion distances one from the work. The result becomes an abstraction, and lacks the intimate, spiritual connection with the creative process.
What tips can you give artists looking to infuse their design work with memory or emotion?
Memories are powerful. Look at your drawing tools as a way of mapping the inner self and investigating memory and emotion. Let the mind and hand act simultaneously. Visualize the page as a living, breathing thing, a stage where a dynamic drama will take place.
With soft media like charcoal, one can erase, smudge, and lift off—all dimensions of psychology. With watercolor paint, one can blend, overlay, and ultimately learn to go with flow. Color itself can elicit remarkable emotional properties, as can shade and shadow. Pencil lines respond to pressure and can be emphatic, dense, lyrical, or light.
What do you find most inspiring and challenging about creating in plein air? How does it influence the emotional and sensory experience you aim to convey in your artwork?
Being outside in the elements, in the fresh air, is exhilarating! You discover that the possibilities are endless. You let the landscape enter your soul, feeling the earth at your feet, being grounded. You are in direct contact with the land.
Rather than drawing what I see, I try to see what I draw. In my work I try to capture how shadows come alive on the ground plane, how tree trunks look like faces, how rocks embody the concept of qi—I follow where my imagination takes me.
You’ve mentioned the importance of the dream state in the design process. How do you incorporate your dreams into your designs?
I start every morning by going to my studio and writing my dreams down in the back of a small 3″ x 5″ sketchbook that I always keep in my back pocket. I am interested in the spatial qualities of my dreamed landscapes, and I try to draw as much detail as I can remember.
Before I start a design project, I will look through my dream books, surfing for ideas and inspiration. I try to translate the images from my dream books into reality by giving them scale, dimension, and form.
If you don’t think you are creative, or if you think you lack imagination, I encourage you to write down your dreams for a month then look at what you have recorded. You will be amazed at the imagination and creativity that springs from the dream state. Legitimize what you learn in this magical time and integrate those insights into your creative process. Dream time is truly an amazing space.
What is your media of choice to sketch with?
I love the fountain pen and the sound its point makes when touching the surface of the paper. I’ve been using the same fountain pen for decades now. Drawing with it is an exquisite experience. It was one of the best investments of my life. My next favorite drawing tool for sketching is the mechanical pencil. I use a Pentel Twist-Erase 0.5 with 2B lead which is great for field sketching since I don’t have to sharpen it, and the 2B lead glides easily over the paper. I also like the Blackwing Matte soft lead pencil.