Katie Woodward - The Urban Sketching Handbook Understanding Light: Portraying Light Effects in On-Location Drawing and Painting

Before we can dive into the waters of understanding light, what tools do we use? Where do we begin?

Pencils, pens, pastel, and paints! There are so many tool options out there. For the urban sketcher, one thing is always the most important: portability. What do you want to carry with you? For some this may be a plein air easel with a full oil paint setup, for others it may be a ballpoint pen and a small sketchbook that can be stowed in a pocket. It requires some testing of materials to decide what youre interested in working with, and what you want to be troubled to drag along with you. Luckily, urban sketching is a perfect time to experiment with new things! You can experiment with however many materials you want, and you never have to pick just one.

When choosing your tools, think about how youll be using them out in the world. Do you need to bring a small stool to sit on? How will you balance everything? Do you need a board to clip materials to? Something to keep your water from spilling? What type of case or pouch do you need hold everything when your tools arent in use? Figuring out your setup is just as important as the tools themselves. Time spent figuring it out at home is time saved when you are starting to sketch on-site. Remembering to include things like sunscreen and a big hat to keep the sun out of your eyes can improve your sketching experience.

• sketchboard
• water cup
• 0.3 mechanical pencil
• assorted Pigma Micron pens
• watercolor brushes
• portable watercolor palette
• portable stool
• binder clips
• folder with loose watercolor paper
• battery-powered clip light (for nighttime sketches and dark museums)

The following vocabulary is used throughout the book and can be useful for talking about light in our sketches.

Cast Shadow: The shadow of one object falling on another object.

Chroma: How much saturation a color has. A high-chroma color will be vibrant and saturated with pigment, while a low-chroma color will be more neutral (more gray or brown). The stripe starts by being a high-chroma orange, and by mixing with its complement, a blue, it becomes a low-chroma brown.

Complementary Colors: Colors that appear across from each other on the color wheel (red and green, blue and orange, purple and yellow). Mixing these together can make browns and grays.

Contrast: The difference between two or more elements. Black and white are an example of high contrast, while similar tones would be lower in contrast.

Form Shadow: A shadow created by the object itself blocking the light.

Highlight: The area where the most light hits an object.

Hue: Another word for color.

Local Color: The color of an object as it appears in bright, colorless light.

Occlusion Shadow: A shadow that falls in the tiny nook between two objects that are close together.

Reflected Light: When light bounces off one object and hits another, often filling in a shadow.

Value: How light or dark something is.

Starting a Sketch

All sketchers have their own process. When starting a sketch, I like to begin by blocking in the biggest shapes because its the only way I can manage to keep a subject on the page without running out of space! Whether you start with the biggest shape, work from one side of the page to the other, go straight to paint, or meticulously plan in graphite, the most important thing is to begin. Dont worry so much about how it will turn out or messing up; remember, its just sketching and should be fun. If you arent happy with the results, you can always try again. We learn something with every sketch, regardless of the outcome.

KATIE WOODWARD

Column Capital, New York City

8" x 8" | 20.3 x 20.3 cm; graphite pencil, watercolor, white Signo gel pen