Sketching complex scenes in edges and shapes

Workshop language: English

The secret to creating a lively sketch of a complex scene is to simplify it into a few big shapes and important edges that reflect the story you wish to tell about the place.

In this workshop we’ll learn how to abstract our scene into its main shapes of colour and value and then use these shapes to determine the important edges and the relationships between them.

We’ll also decide on a focus - the story - for our sketch and see how this will impact which edges and shapes we start with.

This understanding of our scene will enable us to create a final sketch that mixes line and colour (and possibly different media) in a lively way!

Key skills:

Learning Goals:

• Learn how to simplify a complex scene into a few main shapes - looking for areas of similar colours, negative spaces and shadow shapes.
• Learn how to use shapes to define the important edges.
• Learn how to use story to further simplify the scene and strengthen our composition.
• Learn how to combine line and shapes together and sketch a complex scene without getting bogged down in all the details.

Suggested material:

Participants are free to use their own selection of drawing tools and colour but here are some suggestions:

• Permanent ink pen
• Watercolour (no specific colours needed)
• A few watercolour pencils/ coloured pencils/ crayons/ markers for the thumbnails - suggest a minimum of three (one light, one mid and one dark)
• Any other favourite drawing tools
• Paper to suit (A5 sketchbook or larger)