I love browsing through stationery stores. A couple of years ago, I picked up a random box of watercolour cakes, and a small, spiral bound sketchbook. Both of these moved 3 homes with me, always unpacked, always unused.
A few months ago, travelling through Amsterdam, I had the sudden urge to put pen to paper and start sketching the scene that was in front of me.
I have always been decent at free hand drawing of basic shapes, since the days of school geometry. My father was a professor of maths, and I was always in awe of how easily he would draw free hand circles on the blackboard. So I would practice drawing as a child. However, once I left school, I never sketched for myself. My sketching became limited to machine drawings (thanks to my mechanical engineering grad studies) and Pictionary, where I was the best sketcher among my group of friends, but that isn’t saying much, if you know what I mean. The average sketching abilities of our group are on the exact same axis as that of greats like Leonardo da Vinci, except that we are on the opposite end of that axis.
Coming back to my story, I managed to stick through the hard part and completed that sketch in Amsterdam - it was just a bunch of shapes put together in a form that resembled what I was seeing. Over the next few days, it felt like a long dormant part of me was unlocked, as I started seeing ‘sketchable scenes’ and making attempts to translate them on paper. What was marinating for over two decades had started flowing out.
Visiting Paris & Florence, and seeing street artists go about sketching, drawing & painting their art also helped me learn a lot. I would stand next to them for extended periods of time, trying to understand their process through observation - I am so thankful for them for not asking me to buzz off and letting me see what they are doing.
Now back home, I started googling ‘sketching’, and thanks to no online privacy, I saw an ad for the ‘Urban Sketching workshop by Kabir Pradhan’. It was happening at a time when Ekta was travelling again, and I had made up my mind to be home and not socialise - being an introvert, I needed to spend time on my own. I called up the number in the ad, and spoke to Kabir. Turns out he lives in Pune, a city I was born in. I asked him a few questions to understand whether this is a legitimate course that will give me what I am looking for. Satisfied, I paid the fees and then for the next 7 days, from 8pm to 9pm, Kabir conducted online classes and took us through the basics of Urban Sketching. I finally had a definition to the kind of sketching that I was being drawn to.
As someone who gets consumed by new pursuits, I wanted to know more. So I discovered Taria’s YouTube channel and started watching her videos about urban sketching and watercolour. Nitin Singh is another YouTuber whose videos on watercolour work helped me to understand the basics.
Last night, I found a stock image of Crawford Market online, one of the oldest markets of Mumbai and started sketching it for practice. My old sketchbook was used in Kabir’s class, and I used a brand new one for this sketch. I had no plans to colour this one, but about 2 hours after being done with it, I went back to that drawer and pulled out that old bunch of watercolour cakes. Using whatever I had observed on YouTube over the last few days, I started filling the sketch in, and once I was done, I did NOT feel like tearing away the page from that new sketchbook.
I feel like I am going backward in time when it comes to pursuing modes of expression. I have started shooting analog film a lot more (thanks to a vintage camera that Ekta gifted me, a post on that is coming next week) and now pen, paper & basic colours with a brush. As someone who has mostly been a digital photographer, I am finding that the older modes of expression I’m delving into are adding a new perspective to my view of the world.
Sketching is slow and deliberate. It is about understanding what is in front of you, breaking it down piece by piece, understanding the relative sizes of these pieces in relation to each other & then building them again on paper. It is not necessary to be accurate, but it is important to try to capture the core, or soul of what is in front of you. That needs careful observation and focusing your thoughts - it is turning out to be quite meditative as a result and I can’t wait to travel more and sketch more, along with photographing things, of course.
I’ve put down a list of channels & resources below, that have helped me. Hope they help & encourage you too!
Kabir Pradhan Art for figuring out the next batch of the Urban Sketching Course: Link
Taria’s Sketching Adventures for tons of knowledge & inspiration: Link
Nitin Singh’s tutorials: Link
Filipe Almeida’s channel for watching real time sketching & watercolour work - he only uploaded a few videos 5 years ago, but I found them immensely helpful: Link
Here are a few images of today’s sketch, my basic setup, and the sketches that started it all - hover over the image for descriptive titles.
