As mentioned previously, the April theme I set for my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon was foreshortening! It was great to focus on oblique views and street scenes.

Once again, I have to say how much I absolutely love working on a theme for an entire month at the same time as others. I get lots of inspiration from the work posted in the community and find the weekly videos I film super helpful for clarifying my insights. Here is an image showing all the videos (and a livestream replay) I created in April, plus a preview of what’s ahead in May!

I started the month by telling the community that I prefer overlapping shapes to oblique views with lots of foreshortened shapes, and I’ve ended the month more convinced of this.

I forced myself to sketch uninspiring and tricky local street scenes (you can see a few of these in this article), and that has given me a clearer idea of how to see curved foreshortened streets especially when they are going up or down. I’m also discovering ways to see more interesting scenes in the ‘ugly’ everyday suburban streets that I look at during my morning coffee and sketch sessions.

I created this page of thumbnails (recording the amount of foreshortened shapes vs. straight-on shapes in several street scene paintings) to confirm that the street views I find most interesting contain overlapping straight-on shapes that are the important part of the composition.

During April, I also continued to play with different media (see my seven-media sketch of my desk here), and I’m still searching for a tool to draw over Neocolors. Someone in the community suggested a brush pen, so you will see some sketches done with a Pentel Sepia Brush pen. I continue to love using Neocolor II, and this month, I even used them dry.

You’ll also see references to 7 lines and 5 shapes in these sketches – as I explored new ways of using my techniques from my Travel Sketching course. I love the way I’m able to combine lots of different concepts into my work at the moment.

It’s been a crazy busy month for me, with lots of projects happening simultaneously (I’ll share more about them tomorrow in my monthly newsletter), so my sketching has been in the in-between moments. But at the same time my sketchbook has been a real playground for experiments and I’m not putting any pressure on myself to create ‘finished’ or ‘good’ work. It really keeps my creative juices flowing when I’m constantly trying new things and not afraid of unsuccessful work.

Members of my community see ALL my work  – but here is a good selection of pages from my sketchbooks from April….

The final sketch in this collection is a transition piece for our May theme of Limited Palettes. It also combines all the previous themes from our Sketching Adventure Community plus a Travel Sketching course concept. 🙂

I hope you had a good month of sketching in April! I would love to know if you had any breakthroughs or exciting sketching adventures… let me know in the comments below!

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