Pocket Sketching with Kath Macaulay

Pocket Sketching with Kath Macaulay By Episode

• Virtual Travel (#201)

  Because you can't always go somewhere, why not relive the best places? Using a photo from your travel, isolate focal points and sketch only one. Always use the timer to stay within 25 minutes. (Architecture takes an extra 5 minutes.) As your mind can visualize only one thing at a time, you will escape into the trip. When you review your sketch, you will remember far more than is in the photo. This is a fabulous meditation.

• Travel Journaling (#202)

• Focal Point (#203)

  Too much 'stuff' will wreak anything and take too much time. Find what caught your eye. Stay within 25 minutes. The sketch will remind you of everything you didn't sketch right down to the smells.

• Copying from a Magazine (#204)

  Find a photo of a painting or sketch you like. There is a reason you like it, usually subliminal. Copy it in 25 minutes or less. In the process you will find out why you picked it and how it was made. You will incorporate this in your own work in the future.

• Scraping (#205)

  Using an area already wet with water, scrape with any tool to clear an area. We used a credit card to clear rocks in a stream, then the end of the pen lid to scrape out bushes and trees. Thumb nails work well as scrapers.

• Wax As A Resist (#206)

  John Singer Sargent, and others in the 1800s used a candle stub for wax as a resist. It is perfect for wind on water, bright reflections, and trees against the sky. Can be done in layers, holding each color as you build layers. It is never messy and is archival so you don't remove it.

• Flowers and the Timer (#207)

  Always start with a daisy: it's the easiest flower. If you get it right, the viewer will think everything's good. Everything else is out of focus and simply color, even the vase. It's decorative, fun and the opposite of scientific illustration. Relax, enjoy. These look great when matted decoratively. Complete in 25 minutes or less, using a timer. Use everything you have learned: color, contrast, focal point, wax and scraping.

• Cobbled Still Life (#208)

  Apples in a bowl are boring. In a room pick 3 or 4 items which are not together. Go to them and block them in on your paper, one in front of the other. You are building a composition of things from different places. Go back to each to finish the sketch. Use 5 extra minutes to find your items. Now you can take things out of context in a landscape.

• Field Equipment (#209)

  When you really want portability, keep everything compact instead of big, thick sketchbooks that are hard bound. You want to see it, sketch it and leave within 25 minutes or less. You do not want to attract other people who will distract you. Plan to never put anything down on a table or easel where you will attract people or lose equipment.

• Fix 'em (#210)

  When you don't feel like starting anything, grab 4 or 5 poor sketches and try to fix them. Use contrast, color, focal point. Great review: two may get better, while 3 get worse, but they weren't good anyway. Great review of the importance of the basics.

• Journaling (#211)

  The difference is words. The addition of words doubles the meaning. Date the entry. Leave space for words that tell what's important. Can be extremely personal and a private journal just for you. Can be a shared travel journal. Greeting cards as a travel journal. Also, how to pick a paper that will work with the pen.

• Food (#212)

  No timer needed. You've paid for it, you're hungry and it's getting cold. Start with a mark and possibly include any background. It's ephemeral, fast and fun. A bit about drinking and sketching.

• The Monotone (#213)

  For extreme speed, go with just grey scale or use color for only the focal point. Convert a colored photo. No expensive equipment is needed: just "miles on the brush". Your pen will allow the grey scale made famous by Ansel Adams. You have a huge range of effect.

• Water Splashing (#301)

  To make splashing water appear, you must show what's around it. Kath discusses the dark colors that make the light colors work, how the water needs very little pigment, and how to make the splash at the bottom.

• Care and Feeding of Equipment (#302)

  For extreme portability, Kath demonstrates how to get your equipment out and back without putting anything down, how to handle human intrusion, and how to clean the paints, the set and the lid.

• Trees and Shrubs (#303)

  Both trees and shrubs are made of light and dark areas, not just leaves. Take the time to observe. Where are the darks? What colors are they not? Kath demonstrates how to make them identifiable from one another.

• Clouds (#304)

  Clouds are made of water vapor and are perfect for watercolor. Pen lines don't make clouds, but a 'borrow pit' does. Kath explains a major design element that can be manipulated.

• Water Soluble Line (#305)

  Kath explains and demonstrates how to control the lights and darks of the water-soluble line, and when and how to add water to get the results you want.

• Gouache (#306)

  Kath talks about what gouache is, how to use it and why it is difficult to use in the field with transparent watercolor when you want to work quickly.

• Journaling (#307)

  Since words double the meaning, Kath shows how to incorporate them into sketches. Pocket Sketching was developed for travel journaling, and sketching can be immersive and help to remember the trip from your journal entries.

• Distance and Depth (#308)

  Using color, contrast and focal point, Kath talks about creating distance and importance, and editing things in and out as you THINK you see them.

• Dilute Paint As A Drawing Medium (#309)

  Enjoy an extremely efficient way to draw with the 'mess' in the lid of your paint set, as John Singer Sargent used. You can change anything easily, all you need is a dirty box lid!

• Wet In Wet (#310)

  If you love the sloshy looseness of some watercolor paintings, enjoy a lack of control, except where you want control. The colors that happen and the effects are delightful.

• Flowers Outdoors (#311)

  When outdoors, you see bunches of flowers unless you focus on one. Kath demonstrates how to get the feeling of many flowers as they appear outdoors.

• On Location with Water and Plein Air (#312)

  Kath explores how to stay focused with distractions, how to use the equipment outdoors, making adjustments as you sketch and how to pick and isolate a focal point while limiting time.

• Plein Air with Architecture (#313)

  Kath demonstrates sketching with a huge advantage: the timer! If you don't like the location or the results, you wasted only 25 minutes of your life and have lots of time to do another!