What I Learned From Shari Blaukopf

The Urban Sketchers community will be celebrating their 10 year anniversary this November 11, 2017.

The Urban Sketchers (USk) movement was started on Flickr in 2007 by journalist Gabriel ("Gabi") Campanario.

If you follow urban sketchers on social media you will know that there are quite a few sketchers that really stand out as exceptional and Montreal artist/urban sketcher Shari Blaukopf is one of them for sure!

So I made a request through USk Education Director Mário Linhares  to have Shari put on a workshop (the same workshop that she had previously given at the 2017 Urban Sketcher's Symposium in Chicago) called "Trees and the City"in Ottawa in September.

With thanks to Shari (who is incredibly busy teaching in Montreal) and Mario NOT ONE but TWO workshops were offered and sold-out within hours. The workshops were held on Saturday September 30, 2017 at Sappers Staircase on the Rideau Canal and the weather was amazing!

Sappers Staircase, Ottawa

As an added bonus, Winsor & Newton sponsored Shari's workshop (as they did at the 2017 Urban Sketcher's Symposium in Chicago) and gave each participant a beautiful bag with watercolours.

Shari greeting sketchers and handing out Winsor & Newton bags

Every sketcher received a Cotman Pocket Sketch Box and tubes of artist quality watercolours

What I Learned From Shari Blaukopf

You can read the FULL details (objectives, learning goals, schedule, evaluations, etc) about the workshop at this link http://www.urbansketchers.org/2017/08/trees-and-city-workshop-in-ottawa-canada.html  

What I want to do with this blog post is share a few photos from the day and some wonderful take-aways that I got from this great workshop.

Shari Blaukopf welcoming sketchers to her workshop

Our Classroom View

The view from our outdoor classroom

 My Notes: Part 1

Handout: Shari Blaukopf workshop "Trees and the City" (Tree Shapes p.2)

Using her own sketches for examples, Shari described her approaches to painting trees

• "Leave holes in trees for the birds to go through"
• All of the branches together = width of trunk
• Start with drawing the trunk
• Don't stop tree trunk at ground - extend into shadow
• You can say a lot about trees without drawing every leaf

Shari's talked about her sketching equipment

• Mechanical pencil (that she can only find at the MUJI store in New York City)
• Fountain pen (that takes platinum carbon ink cartridges)
• Travel brushes and other brushes like flats, daggers and riggers (Escoda Sable, Rosemary R3)
• Pitt pens
• Winsor & Newton watercolours
• I love that Shari mentioned Ottawa urban sketcher John Wright and how he traveled and sketched the Camino de Santiago with a very limited palette. Read the Book Review by Marc Holmes : http://www.urbansketchers.org/2014/05/pilgrim-sketches-500-mile-walk.html

We did the following exercises

• Sketching to warm up - 5 tree shapes
• Mixing Greens - mix warm/cool; light/dark greens using colours in your palette
• Painting tree shapes: doing the whole shape of the tree in one go
• Creating multiple thumbnail/value sketches
• Completing a sketch of trees and buildings

 

Handout: Shari Blaukopf workshop "Trees and the City" (P.2)

 Part 2: Composition with trees

Shari mentioned water colour teaacher Edgar A. Whitney who spent less time teaching technique and emphasized the importance of good design. See Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting By Edgar A. Whitney

Source: Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting By Edgar A. Whitney (p.28)

Handout: Shari Blaukopf workshop "Trees and the City": (Composing With Trees p.4)

Source: Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting By Edgar A. Whitney (p29)

Warm-up sketches

While Sharii is colour mixing greens, everyone takes taking notes

Shari demonstrates painting simple tree shapes

Demo: Simple tree shapes

Exercise No. 2.: Workshop sketches - simple tree shapes

Shari talking about painting values

Shari's value painting

Shari talking about composition and thumbnail sketches

Shari's thumbnail sketch

There are five Urban Sketcher groups in Canada  

(Four of the five Canadian USk groups had participants at today's workshop)

Montreal Urban Sketchers

https://urbansketchersmontreal.wordpress.com/

Ottawa Urban Sketchers

http://ottawaurbansketchers.blogspot.ca/

Toronto Urban Sketchers

http://toronto-urbansketchers.blogspot.ca/

Waterloo Urban Sketchers 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/UrbanSketchersWaterlooRegion/

Vancouver Urban Sketchers 

http://vancouver-urban-sketchers.blogspot.ca/ 

My Work In Progress

My composition/thumbnail sketch

Decided on perpendicular and this is as far as I managed to get before the next session started.

Because I ran out of time, I plan to head back to Sappers Staircase at the same time (11:00 - 12:00 am) to finish this.

I really enjoyed Shari's workshop and learned so much. When you spend a lot of time sketching cities, trees really give life to the bricks, concrete and stone.

It's really amazing how much information Shari managed to impart upon us all in such a short time.
If you ever have a chance to be in one of her workshops, I highly recommend it!

Happy sketching!