Foundations Friday Index

April 5, 2019 | 6 Comments

Over the years, I’ve created many articles introducing the concepts of my very popular Foundations course. This page contains an index to all those articles.

My Foundations course will help you develop the essential sketchers that every sketcher needs. It has been designed for beginners but is also great for more seasoned sketchers who want to speed up their sketching. Over the years, I’ve found that many self-taught urban sketchers have gaps in their knowledge, which can lead to a degree of frustration with their lack of improvement. Foundations will help with that too. Every time I go through Foundations I have insights into how to use the core concepts from the course in my work in new ways!

 

If you are reading these articles to find out what is in the course, I suggest that you check out the 2016 articles first as they are the most descriptive of the lesson content. The 2019 articles contain more advanced applications. I hope that you find these articles helpful!

In 2024 I created a series on Instagram.Find out more here.


Lesson 1: Knowing (and loving) your Materials

2016: Using a water soluble pencil

2017: Revisiting my water soluble pencil as I don’t use it much

2019: Discoveries… White and gold gel pens

2020: Revisiting my watercolour pencils

 


Lesson 2: Feeling Edges

2016: Continuous line sketches of my coffees and a local house

2017: Continuous line sketches in New Zealand

2019: Recent continuous line sketches

2020: Open-ended continuous line sketches

 


Lesson 3: Abstracting Shapes

2016: Shape sketching of a cathedral, coffee cups and cafe tables and chairs

2017: Starting with shapes for a complex scene in Auckland, NZ

2019: More shape examples

2020: Abstracting shapes in differing light

 


Lesson 4: Constructing Volumes

2016: Volumes sketching of a fire station, more coffee cups and cafe views

2017: Volume sketch of my peacock teacup and comparison of the three ways of visual thinking drawing a tree

2019: A few recent Constructing Volumes examples

2020: How working in volumes is different from edges and shapes

 


Lesson 5: Measured Setup

2016: Working out how to accurately draw a latte glass and saucer

2017: Measuring the relationships between three random objects on my desk

2019: Measured setup (and some favourite tools for working this way)

2020: Do you need sight measuring? (Lessons 5-7)

 


Lesson 6: Minimal Setup

2016: Coffee cups and beach scenes quickly and loosely

2017: Recent approaches to minimal setup – more NZ sketches and one of Castle Howard Yorkshire UK

2019: Recent Minimal Setup examples

 


Lesson 7: Putting It All Together

2016: Coffee different ways!

2017: Detailed step-by-step of a teacup sketch

2019: Having a cuppa

 


Lesson 8: Balancing Line and Colour

2016: Two different approaches to sketching a cafe counter

2017: More architectural examples of mixing line and colour – Palladio and St James Sydney

2019: More recent examples of balancing line and work

2020: Urban sketching training (Lessons 8-12)

 


Lesson 9: Composing the View

2016: Using a view finder to sketch Mosman Art Gallery

2017: Comparing a viewfinder sketch of my neighbour’s roof with a looser version

2019: The importance of getting ground-lines right

 


Lesson 10: Creating a Focus

2016: Thumbnail explorations of a busy scene in Sydney’s downtown (lots of interesting discussion as well!)

2017: Creating different stories about the view of my neighbour’s property

2019: Creating a focus at Callanish Stones

 


Lesson 11: Working from a Focus

2016: A range of examples – Melbourne, Singapore, Norfolk Island

2017: Some local shops and more examples from NZ

2019: Allowing a sketch to evolve

 


Lesson 12: Reviewing your Work

2016: A few thoughts about reviewing your own work and my takeaways from the 2016 run-through

2017: Examples of how I reviewed my work at the end of my first sketchbook and my takeaways

2019: Reviewing work and cafe sketching tips

 


Thank you so much for being a part of these three big series of articles – I hope that you found them helpful. They were a lot of fun to put together and have really being useful in the development of my own work!


 

Find out more about Foundations

 


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