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17 Things You Can Do Today To Kickstart Your Sketching 1 Look up the Best Sketch Youve Ever Done 2 2 Go Shopping (It Wont Take Long or Cost Much!) 3 3 Prepare for the Worst 3 4 Prepare for the Best! 4 5 Go For Coffee & Cake 5 6 Sketch the Sketch, Then Sketch the Sketch! 5 7 Start With Pencil, Finish With Pen 6 8 Draw Slowly & Look at the Object More Than You Look

at Your Page7

9 Use Your Stuff! 810 When to Use Colour 911 Put Your Book On Display 912 Show a Non-Sketcher Your Book 1013 Create a Sketching Bucket List 1014 Sketch at Dusk 1115 Join a Life Drawing Group 1116 Make Some Sketching Buddies 1217 Make Your Sketching Learning Like a T 13

5 Things Not To Do1 Dont Wait Until Things Are Perfect 132 Dont Spend Time Thinking About It 133 Dont Look For Success 134 Dont Let Fear Win 135 Dont Wimp Out Citing Lack of Inspiration 13

Well, Thats Enough For One Day! (Conclusion) 14

1Whether you are new to sketching or have been sketching for a while now, the 17 tips in this E-book will be of use to you. Some tips are purely practical, definitely things you can do today. Other tips are motivational; try these tips now and remember them for the future. Some tips are both practical and motivational. And some may seem obvious but I think you will find a different take on them useful. They are all things you can do today, work on or commit to and they will improve your sketching both immediately and over time. Begin now and make today a landmark in your sketching history!

You could conceivably to fit all of these 17 tips into a single day. The tips have been placed in chronological order for a day of sketching so I suggest you start at number 1 and work your way through to 17.

If you dont have a whole day to set aside for sketching, work your way through the steps as you can. Some of the 17 things are preparation for sketching and once you have them done you will be right to go and spend an hour or so sketching when the time is right.

2Often when we plan to create, we face a challenge even before we begin. Contemplating the time we have set aside to sketch, be it minutes or hours, is similar to facing a blank page or blank canvas. What will we fill it with? Can I do it? Do I have it in me?

Go and find a sketch or drawing that you were quite pleased with, one that surprised you, one that you wondered, How did I do that? Spend a few minutes looking at it and reminding yourself that you are exactly the same person today as the you that created it. Nothing has changed. You are creative. You will create. You havent lost it. You cant lose it.

If you are new to sketching and art and think that this step doesnt apply to you, think again. Your recent desire to draw and create isnt the first youve had. Youve probably tortured yourself by remembering the bad art you made at school. You may have even allowed yourself to recall creative humiliation at the hands of the unthinking. But not everything you did was bad. Allow yourself a few minutes to remember your successes. Maybe they werent acknowledged by others. Perhaps it was just you who liked your pink texta rose on your Biology divider. Nows the time to acknowledge that you DID like it.

3Buy these two things:Get a cheap, lightweight exercise book. Choose one about 48 pages is plenty. If the dimensions of it are significantly different to your sketchbook, cut it down to the same proportions. Now you have a little sketchbook that you can slip into the back cover of your real sketchbook and take out sketching. In tip 7 you will find out how to use your sketchbooks sketchbook!

Get a sheet of blotting paper. Cut it into a couple of smaller pieces, just larger than your sketchbook page. These will also keep easily in the back of your book. When you are sketching, especially when you are using a wet medium like watercolour, slip one between the pages in front and behind the page you are working on. This will help prevent accidental creative marks on those pages. When you find its time to finish sketching you can move one of these sheets of blotting paper to nestle between the pages you were working on. It is especially handy if you suddenly need to pack up and your work hasnt had time to dry.

If you use more than one sketchbook, make both a sketchbook sketchbook and two blotting paper pages for each one.

Not really as negative as it sounds, I want you to pack really well for a day of sketching. Start by considering what your worst might be. For me it is having an uncomfortably heavy weight hanging on my shoulder. For you it might be feeling chilled, getting sunburnt, feeling hungry or thirsty. There are many physical distractions that bring us home earlier than we had planned and it is your worst I want you to consider up front and prepare for it. You know your pet peeves. Take the lightweight sketchbook. Pack a scarf or sunblock, a snack and a drink. Take a rug or chair to save you from the damp ground. Pocket a few dollars change if the smell of coffee is going to undo you. Whatever it is, pack it, and then stop. This isnt an invitation to spend the day preparing!

Often when we pack for sketching we either end up with too much or too little. Too much and I know Ill be home early, dragging my heavy bag behind me. Too little and Ill be back before time and feeling frustrated. The next tip will help you decide what else to pack.

4Yes, its time to pack your sketching supplies! These are things I like to keep in my minimal sketching bag. (I keep larger supplies of sketching tools at home and swap them as I feel I want to try something different or feel like a change.)

sketchbook (including sketchbooks sketchbook and blotting paper)

mechanical pencil with 2B lead

drawing pens in various sizes eg. 02, 05, 08, black ink

brush pens, 2 shades of grey

set of watercolours

waterbrush

2 travel brushes

retractable eraser

small water atomizer (to spray your watercolours with to soften them before painting

small water bottle

small container for water (empty to start with)

purse pack of tissues

something to keep used tissues in (so I can keep using them but they dont mess up my bag.

You dont need all these things or the same brands or styles for today. Use this list as a guideline and work towards trying them all out at some stage.

This list contains some of the tools and supplies I use for sketching. I wouldnt be without most of these tools and the good news is that many of them are widely available. These links are affiliate links, which means if you buy I earn a commission, so I thank you in advance! Ive chosen a seller that should be able to supply you no matter where you live. Please note however that I only recommend products that I have tried, tested and use myself.

5Yes, it will be enjoyable but the main reason is that coffee shops are a great place to break the ice with sketching, especially if you are new to sketching in public. They also come ready with tables for you to work on and comfy chairs. You may be the only one there with a sketchbook but you wont be the only one with a book. There will be the notetakers writing away and the readers, well, reading. There is the guy with his laptop and the endless empty short black cups stacked up behind it (actually he would be great to sketch! Hes not going to move much!) Take comfort in the way they spread their books and bags out on the table and get out your sketchbook, pencil, eraser and ink marker. That should be enough to start with. Suddenly you are one of those people who have come to the coffee shop to work. You simply blend in - a lot more than you think you do.

Now its time for your sketchbooks sketchbook. Open your cut down exercise book and look at the whole page and then at your scene. Remember its likely the people in your scene will move before youve finished so keep this in mind when deciding on your composition. Use a couple of full page spreads in your sketchbooks sketchbook (exercise book) to try out different ways of capturing your scene on paper. Use free strokes and broad shapes only. This is no place to try out your drawing. Its purely to settle on a layout. It need only take a few seconds each spread.

6Once you are happy with your chosen layout switch books. Transfer the basic shapes from your exercise book to your sketchbook with pencil. Draw lightly and initially, only look at your sketch ignoring the scene. Once your have transferred all the pertinent marks, start looking again. Add more basic shapes if need be but no detail. The detail is added with pen so switch when you are ready.

Using pen when you sketch is a great way to free up and get to know your style. No, you cant erase it and thats the point. These sketches will show your personal wobble. They will show your mistakes as clearly as your happier lines. You will learn to incorporate both wobble and mistakes into completed and SUCCESSFUL drawings. How? By drawing with pen and having to solve those problems you previously called mistakes!

7This is a good way of training your eye. We need to train our eye to see whats really there, but by eye, I really mean our brain.

Our brains are really busy. If they truly looked at everything we saw they would be overloaded and grind to a halt, so they only review enough of the information sent from our eyes to get an idea of what it is we see. For example, we are sketching in the park. We have a look around. Our eyes send a hugely detailed image of what we are seeing. Our brains reaction is something like Oh, thats a park bench, one of those wooden ones. From that split second on, our brain is off doing something it deems more important. We are left with an image of the park bench we are familiar with IN OUR MINDS EYE. If we try to draw this image we will get into trouble. The shape of the legs will just not work out. We wont be able to figure out what happens at the back rest. It will be another drawing we are disappointed in and dont know why it happened.

The trick is to see it with our real eyes, not only in our minds eye. To do this we need to train our brain to cease and desist on the other tasks (or most of them), for just a little while, for as long as our sketch takes. Then we can feed the true information through our eyes to our brains and that information has a good chance of making it all the way to our hands and come out on the page.

Sketching slowly is a great way to start this training. If we sketch slowly we can insist our brains take in all that visual information. We can catch it as it sneaks of to think about something else and drag it back to our scene.

After a short while of this kind of deliberate seeing your brain will grow bored with what it perceives as doing nothing and try to make work out of it. At this point you will be able to draw what you really see! Your brain will be concentrating, sorting out shapes, seeing angles, relationships, lines and tones. Your job of sketching becomes much easier. You simply need to record the visual information as your brain works it out!

8I had a lot of supplies on that list. Heres what to do with them and why.

I use a mechanical pencil because Id rather click the lead down a few times during my drawing than deal with the lead growing softer and thicker as I draw, as it would with a standard pencil. Also, I found that it always seemed to go completely blunt during the time I was concentrating most! Another reason is the social conditions of today. My preferred means of sharpening my drawing pencils is with a snap-knife. I do it that way because drawing pencils tend to come in strange sizes and shapes that just dont fit into a sharpener. I dont like carrying around a knife these days, so the mechanical pencil is my drawing tool of choice. They come with HB leads as standard inclusions. I remove these and replace them with 2B leads. (See the next tip for more on using this pencil.)

02, 05 and 08 drawing pens give you a variety of line thicknesses, from very fine to nice and black. Use the fine 02 pen for things in the background or fine detail. The 05 pen is great for the middle ground and choose the 08 pen for the foreground people and objects. Changing pens for the different areas of your drawing will help give it depth.

2 Shades Of Grey brush pens. I use a very pale one and a deeper one in the same colour range within the set. These are very good for quick sketching and while they do work with watercolour, when they are used alone with black pen lines that they work their best. Use these for your shadows.

A waterbrush is a specially designed brush that holds water within its handle. You simply squeeze to have the water flow through the bristles onto your paint or your page. You can get away with not even using your travel brushes for some sketches. If you only use a waterbrush you wont need the water bottle and small water container, just a tissue to clean it on.

I use a retractable eraser as I find it erases more accurately and stays cleaner.

My water atomizer is one that came in a set of cosmetic travel bottles. I keep it filled with water and when I first open my watercolours I give them a couple of squirts. This causes paints to soften and by the time Im ready for them, they are perfect to work with. They take the water more easily and their colours are true, not wishy washy.

My water bottle and small container for water are also from my travel cosmetics kit. I keep the water bottle filled with clean water and the container empty so I can decant some of the water into it, use it to wash my brushes and throw it away. This way I always have some more clean water ready for the next clean up.

9There are a couple of options here and I use them all at different times. First, as youve packed your watercolours you can use them where you are. This is good if you have a little space and time. Really, you dont need much of either - Ive done watercolour sketches in a flash while standing up, for example one of the Batobus as it approached our stop in Paris! However, usually you will want somewhere to place your watercolour set and take time to enjoy building the colours up. Again the coffee shop is king as a venue for watercolour sketching!

The next option is to do it all at home afterwards. I like to do this for several reasons. It separates me from what is really there so my imagination can be the boss for a while. At home I can more easily create a rhythm of colours across my page because Im not bogged down in trying to replicate the exact shade of blue T-shirt that guy is wearing or the full spectrum of colours in that ladies floral dress pattern. In short, I find it easier to simplify at home.

Or you can do a combination of both. This works well for capturing tones. A simple wash of burnt umber and a touch of black, diluted down to the palest of tones will help you define the people and objects in space. Done at the scene your sketch will hold more life, seem more real. You can follow up with skin tones and other colours at home. Some sketches take time to colour and doing this at home may be the wisest use of your time, freeing you up to do more sketches!

Get a small easel you can sit somewhere in your home so you will see it a lot. Leave your sketchbook open at your sketch. Look at it as you go about your day. What do you see now that you didnt notice before? What do you really like? What attracts your eye? What would you like to try next time?

Leave your sketch there for at least a day, two days is even better. Keep your easel in use. Open your book to older pages too, pages that you are happy with or pages that you have a question about. This practice will help to train your eye to see flaws more easily and to know what is successful. The next tip is another eye-training one too.

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My guess is you are wondering how will this kickstart your sketching. There is nothing like fresh eyes and enthusiasm to boost your confidence. But that isnt the only reason for this task. You will get to hear and see how your chosen confidant reacts to each page. Some of those reactions wont be what you expected. By this I mean they will see something different to what you see on at least one of your pages. When this happens, listen carefully as there are lessons to be learnt. Ask a few questions but be gentle. The person looking at your book is as interested in not hurting your feelings as you are at not feeling hurt!

This is a great motivator. Include both the achievable and impossible. If you have a desire to sketch it, write it down!

It might be easier to start with a local list. My list includes the Big Banana, as I live in Coffs Harbour. Its very much a giggled at local icon and Ive never drawn it. In fact, I dont think I realised I wanted to until I settled down to write my list!

Now branch out and write the amazing things youd love to see and sketch. My list includes the boats and islands of Halong Bay, Vietnam, the towns of Newfoundland, and, ooh la la, Paris cafes are eternally on my list! I may never get to places like Newfoundland, but its on my list! Having a list like this is the first step in achieving your travel sketching goals.

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Dusk is an interesting time of day to sketch as tones are simplified, more delineated. This is yet another eye training tip. Often when we start sketching it is difficult to see tones. Doing something like squinting when you look at a scene helps for many, but Ive never been a fan of it and only do it rarely. (Im not sure if its my eyelashes or what but I find it incredibly difficult and straining. Try it though because it might work perfectly for you.)

I see sketching at dusk as taking advantage of natures own squint. The last rays of light are easy to see as they lay on the westerly surfaces of your subject. The shadows are deep and just as easy to determine in the areas that are moving towards darkness. Try to capture three tones maximum, highlights, midtones and shadows. As you progress you can build on these, overlapping them to create additional tones.

Life drawing is for artists as jogging is for all kinds of athletes - it is essential training. It may not be your chosen artform but it will improve whatever that artform is. Search your community to find a regular group and sign up. There may be one attached to your local art gallery or high school. Usually the cost is reasonable and is just a sharing of the model fees and accommodation cost. More expensive classes will include tuition as well and are a great idea when you are a beginner. Stick with it and you will reap the rewards.

Why is life drawing so valuable? Well, you can fake a tree or a building even, but you cannot fake a human body. It is not only more eye training but hand training too as it is usual to have some really fast poses to stretch your skills. Not only that, but you will find it is very satisfying to create within a group of like minded people, not to mention the friends you might meet!

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Life drawing is one place to find them but there are other ways too. Think, if you want to start sketching around town, its possible some friends you already have may want to as well but have never said. Ask around. Take a weekend workshop in an associated skill and chat to the fellow students, and the presenter! Volunteer for art and craft related tasks at a nearby school, you may meet up with kindred spirits.

What can you do today to make sketching buddies? There are many opportunities online and one of the best places to find dedicated sketchers of all abilities is on Flickr. You may be familiar with Flickr as an online photo sharing community, however there is a large artistic community using the site as well. This community is divided up into Flickr Groups where you can view others work, contribute to discussions and share your own work too. Once you sign up for Flickr you will automatically be given a page to upload your images to. But signing up is just the beginning. (For more information about Flickr check out the Flickr Tour. Keep in mind that it works the same for sketches and artworks as it does for photos.)

Join some Flickr groups. This is where you will find your sketching soul mates! To join a group is very simple, just click on the join group button, you may have to agree to some rules and usually you are in! (Rules on Flickr are to keep the groups on topic and constructive.) Here are some fabulous groups you might like to join, read their about section to get an understanding of each groups direction:

Artlings who sketch, draw & paint. Yes, our very own group! Join now! Everyday Matters Group Urban Sketchers

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Ive heard it said that the best education can be represented by the letter T. Look at the shape of a T. The shorter cross stroke represents broad knowledge. In the case of sketching this means looking at others work, reading books on the topic and trying out various techniques. But dont leave it at that. The long vertical stroke of the T represents deep learning. Choose an aspect of sketching that resonates with you, for example everyday sketching, sketching people and places in your local community or your family at home. Allow yourself to focus on that aspect, give it extra time and attention, increase your understanding of it. Seek out courses and books that can extend you. Practice as often as you can.

Making your learning like a T doesnt mean all focus on your topic and neglecting the broad knowledge, but it does mean working to combine the two in appropriate proportions. Let the letter T be your guide.

1. Dont wait until conditions are perfect

2. Dont spend time thinking about it. The time it takes to read this is all the time you need to prepare. Be a doer, start immediately. Dont put it off. Each sketching day make a habit of getting down to the business of sketching immediately.

3. Dont look for success. Look for a drawing on the page at the end of the day. The search for success in sketching can stifle your play, your creativity, your experimentation.

4. Dont let fear win. The cure for fear, be it public speaking or, as in this case, the blank white page, is action. Mark that page and the fear leaves.

5. Dont wimp out citing lack of inspiration. If we waited for inspiration to come each time before we create we wouldnt be doing much work! It is that work that starts the inspiration mechanism. Work and inspiration will follow.

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What will you do tomorrow? Or on the weekend? Or next week?

Here is just one little extra tip - plan for your sketching. We write our hairdresser appointments in our diaries and dont dare to miss them, what about our sketching time? Book yourself in and make it as regular as you can. It doesnt have to be for long. You might make time for a 10 minute sketch every day at the end of your lunch break. Just imagine how your sketchbook will look after only a couple of weeks! Work out what suits you and book it in!

I hope you found this e-book valuable as you delve into the exciting world of sketching.

If you have received this e-book from another source, please visit www.the-artling.com to find out more about me, my work and to subscribe to my updates.

Happy Sketching!Jan

Written and Illustrated by Jan Allsopp. Jan Allsopp 2011.

All images remain the property of Jan Allsopp. Downloading this e-book does not give you the right to copy, alter or use the images or text contained in it in any way. You may share this PDF document as is (without change or modification) for non-commercial purposes. If you would like to include the document on a Web site, or re-publish the material in Web page form, or distribute it for commercial purposes, please e-mail your request to: the.arting@gmail.com