Well, a lot of people say "Oh, I can't draw a straight line with a ruler.
They say, "Oh I always wanted to be an artist but I never could."
I'm going to give you some handy tricks so that you can go sketching anywhere.
Sketching is about is learning to see again. you will find some special place
that just piques your interest. That makes you want to remember that that special place.
I hold my elbow out, my arm out, and measure. You can see that the left side of the church
is as wide as the right side. That gives you your width. And you can bring that right down to your
paper, making sure that your elbow's still straight. I've got in my basic
my basic shape here for the front side and i'll scoot this across.
And now we can divide it into the smaller parts. The builders were so clever about
not just cutting it in half every which way. That is about this this far here.
Sketch that across there and then from there take your thumb, move it up, and see how
much space is to the top of the next balcony.
And so of course the archway is going to be in the middle
the, um, window or the doorway at the top is right over the archway.
And on either side you can see the the pillars.
Well, they're about, let's see. Again I'm measuring with my thumb coming down
and there's an archway in here. So I'm doing the biggest shapes first.
And then notice that the, um, pillars on the top are right -- they are right on top
of one at the bottom ... a little bit smaller than the pillars at the bottom
Now we'll we can come to the
the archway that is at the top ... get that in there.
So I am proving that if this is rough, this is not a perfect drawing,
and that i'm nervous. Lines are a little wiggly.
So people worry about getting their perspective right but if you just
lay your pencil to the
angle that you want and drop it down, you'll get it right every time. You don't have to use higher
math for this. Architects do but you don't. Okay and then, um, this little nice square here
here going to the top of the bell tower on the right. Again I'm just going to drop my
pencil down to get it to the right angle and it's..
Again, archway and in the middle... Let's see, it's a little uneven on top.
The fabulous thing about sketching
is that it's supposed to be rough. It's not perfect like a photo. It's just for you.
And then the, then would you say the "nichos" for the statuary.
And there's a bell in there, I'll go ahead and put that in there. There's
also an archway that you can see through to the sky on the other side.
Okay, and then at the bottom there's this doorway, window
on the side, on both sides are the a little supports for the wall.
Okay so we've done all the the basic shapes and now you can get started on the details.
It'll give you something that's like no one else has done before. It's authentic.
If you can use your squinting and using your pencil as the as the ruler you can get it
just right. Then you can go in and work on the shadows because right now it's just flat,
you know? There's no sense of depth. So with this a nice morning light
looking up there at the shadows there's um shadows on this on the cooler side, on the
east side of this building. There are shadows under the archways.
Okay and then on the pillars because they're round they'll be
easily shadowed.
Every national park has some historic buildings that connect the people to the place.
So here's some shadows here and with charcoal or soft pastel you can smooth it out a little bit.
Now in squinting our eyes, look and see where the darkest darks are.
So, of course, the entrance to the mission is quite dark, no light in there this morning.
And so every doorway, every window is really quite dark. The shadows will define the shapes.
Let's put some shadows back on this side of the building.
There are more shadows coming here now and there are some
spaces for the
statuary to be this oval shapes.
Now for some more texture or some more details. Notice that
at the top of the the mission on the right there is some plaster and then there's
the remnants of the bricks underneath. You don't want to have to draw in every every brick in
there, but you can suggest it with just some light lines through there. Especially here in the
entrance you can see how there's plaster has come off and you you can see the adobe underneath.
And then the background here we've got this wonderful building but what about
the background? Well as an artist you can move mountains so let's move the Tumacácoris
over here just to sort of fill in this space. And we'll just lightly tone that in.
Because they're far away you don't have to put in -- you don't have to put in a lot of,
you know, with a charcoal pencil you can smooth this stuff around. Or you can do cross hatching
anything to put more pigment on the paper. How about some mesquite trees back there? Getting
some idea of the foliage so that the trunks are, I'll have some more darks down here and that'll
make that tree pop out a little bit and we'll just put a suggestion of some mountains over here.
Okay and we don't -- we have a beautiful clear blue sky today but there are some
nice little clouds over here so you can just suggest some shapes like that.
So one thing about parks is that hopefully they have lots of visitors so if you can put
some people into your sketch that will show you know, sort of the proportion. Basically
like these carrot people are just like if you just scribbled -- scribbled a carrot shape right there.
Put a little pin head up here and maybe they're carrying their their back oh maybe
they're holding hands with their sweetie. Put another little carrot shape in here.
Let's have his knee slightly bent so he's walking over to the doorway.
And maybe one of their kids, same thing, just a tiny little carrot shape and with the arms
coming out from the shoulders and you've got the family trip to Tumacácori mission.
The more you are here, of course, the more details you start to see. If you're taking
piano lessons you wouldn't expect to sit down and have Beethoven the first time.
You'd practice.
I encourage everybody to try it. The wonderful thing is that you won't hurt anybody by trying it.
And don't worry about hurting your feelings. You you'll get over it.
So if you'd like, I'll show you how to translate this to watercolor...