Paint and Sip Melbourne 

Urban Art Making- Part 3 (City Scape Sketching)

Sketching! I think it’s everyone’s dream to learn how to take a real life object and then amazingly sketch it into paper. However, soon enough most people will find it challenging without knowing the basic rules of life drawing. Life drawing is usually sketching a human figure but I find it very relaxing and educating to focus also on objects- buildings for example.

The reason for that is that I can learn a lot about perspective, scale and hierarchy. Very useful term when you are trying to turn 3D to 2D.
Sketching a person is great and you can join our next life drawing class and draw a real life male model but where will you find a person standing still in the city?! So building are reliable! They will stick around. Also sculptures, play-grounds, benches etc. try to avoid sketching people, animals and trees.

But what do I know… you can do what you want!!

The straight lines, clear lines are easier to sketch and a great beginning point, so find a comfy bench, spread out with all your sketching materials and maybe put a cup in front of you- maybe you’ll get some coins throwing at you? (happened to me, true story!).

This is a great website that called Sketchbook and they have an article about HOW TO DRAW ARCHITECTURAL STREET SCENES so have a read and maybe get some great tips before you going out there and make your attempt in your first sketching session.

So this is what I have done, it’s so nice to go to Melbourne CBD because its beautiful and so interesting, every corner there is something interesting and creative else to see. I hope this guide will help and encourage you to try some sketching! Share with me your drawing and if you feel you need some more understanding, check out our upcoming classes and get better at painting and art making!

Locations: Carlton Garden, Dockland, Flinders, Yarra River
What I used: Simple charcoals pencils, special charcoal eraser, pencils on small white sketching paper (125g)
Difficulty: Easy- medium (depends what you choose to sketch!)