The Creative Burnout Continues…
I went into the second week of urban sketching feeling even more entrenched in creative burnout. Urban sketching has such a quick energy to it that it requires two things to succeed: confidence and technical skill.
While I have technical skills, I have not developed them much with drawing architecture. So, I already feel some uncertainty around it (exaggerated by the creative burnout), especially when working quickly. Combining this with the unpredictable environments that sketching on-site brings makes it an even more challenging endeavor.
So many of the artists I admire talk about sketching outside and on-site as the top experience of being a true artist (whatever that means). Which is why I started to feel like an imposter when I realized: I don't like urban sketching so far.
Each time I’ve gone, I have dreaded and procrastinated it. This week was especially difficult, as weather and life events disrupted planned sessions. Maybe this would be fine if I were just doing it for fun, but having a grade attached added another layer of pressure.
I so badly want to enjoy urban sketching, but I am just so stressed the entire time. I want to retreat to my studio, where I can take my time to think things out clearly. I’m finding out that I’m a planner through and through. I want each thing I create to be polished and ‘perfect.’
This is when I realized that perfectionism is really impacting my experience in this class. The past few weeks have been somewhat miserable for me, because they’ve focused on quick sketches.
This is going to require a mindset shift on my part before jumping into our next unit: plein air painting.
The whole purpose of doing this class is to experiment with various media and formats. There is not going to be much development in one skill (urban sketching, animal sketching) in just a few weeks.
While not everything I create will be something I want to share, it all adds to my skills (slowly but surely). Creating something you think is ugly should not have to ruin your mood for the rest of the day. It’s a necessary requirement of growth.
The Process
For my first urban sketch, I sat down at Ironclad Roasters with an iced chai tea latte and my iPad. After enjoying colored pencils last week, something was telling me I should try different media.
At first, I thought I’d do fully digital for this first one, but I switched mediums halfway through. After the initial digital sketch, I tried pen & ink. I still wanted to work with color, so I decided to use magenta ink instead.
This ink was not my favorite. Unlike micron pens, this ink stayed wet and would smudge for a long time. For a few mistakes, I tried going over the ink with a white gel pen, but it ended up smudging and creating a lighter pink.
I actually used this technique to try to suggest the lanterns were glowing; however, I’m not sure if this looks intentional.
Additionally, this particular pen did not allow me to get much line weight variation. When I tried hold it more to the side to get lighter lines, it would not work. This made drawing the tiny faces especially difficult.
I would love to revisit this scene with a polychromatic medium.
Ironclad Roasters - 11×9 inches
For the second scene, I sat on a bench in downtown Lynchburg. Once again, I thought this sketch would be digital, so I started on my iPad. However, I ultimately decided to try out a new medium: watercolor pencils.
Sketching in Downtown Lynchburg
Once I transferred my sketch to watercolor paper, I inked over the lines using a micron pen. I learned my lesson with my last sketch that not all pens are created equally.
Then I started shading using my watercolor pencils. This first stage was just dry layers of color. I tried to work blues and purples into all/most of the shadows.
Using a water pen, I went over these areas, and enjoyed creating the looser watercolor texture. Ultimately, these areas needed to be built up in layers.
It might just be this particular medium, but I had trouble pushing the darks. Once the watercolor dried, the darker pencils were almost too hard to layer on top.
Downtown Lynchburg - 8.5×5.5
While working through the intense creative burnout of the past few weeks did a number on me, I’m trying to remember how none of these sketches were a waste of time.
Even though I am not satisfied with the results, they were an opportunity for me to practice my skills and work in unfamiliar environments/conditions.
I’m proud of myself for trying new media, even when I was feeling really exhausted and discouraged.
Maybe I will learn to like spontaneity as we move on to plein air painting? Stay tuned.
