How To Take Artistic Liberty And Have Fun Urban Sketching
Colorful explorations
A few weeks ago, the Dutch celebrated King’s day. Every year, on the 27th of April, people around the country get together to celebrate the king's birthday. (And to express their national solidarity, but personally I think that for many people, it's just a good excuse to have a day off and to drink beer.)
The whole country turns orange on king's day. Orange is the royal color of the Netherlands. People wear their orange shirts and hats and shawls and capes - taken from the closet just a few times a year; for king's day and when the Dutch soccer team is playing. There’s music festivals, food and drinks are sold in the streets, and there are flea markets. People spread out blankets and put on them all the stuff they’ve been keeping in the attic or basement, to sell it.
This year on king’s day, I stumbled upon a cute flea market which was mostly run by kids. The vibe was festive but not too busy -just friendly and fun. Orange flags everywhere, so of course I saw an opportunity to draw and capture the vibe and moment.
I started out by painting the orange flags, and planned to use a lot of orange throughout the drawing, because that color was of course the leading red orange thread of the story I was telling.
Usually, when I draw, almost unconsciously, I tend to often try and find the exact colors that I see. With my watercolors, I try to mix the right green for the trees, color the cars exactly in the colors they are ( black, grey, boring!), paint people’s coats in the colors I see (often black, grey dark blue or some other dark dull color). I try mixing the colors of buildings, which are often mostly shades of beige… That’s all fine, but it can feel (and look) kind of boring. And sometimes in the Netherlands things can look kind of dull and grey as they are, because of the weather and the light.
I remind my students about this regularly, but need to nudge myself every now and then too: you don’t need to be accurate, when you’re drawing. Let’s allow ourselves to take artistic liberty and have some fun. Even though a building is grey or beige, that doesn’t mean you can’t paint it pink, if that’s the color that matches your mood or the vibe of the place! Play!
On king’s day, things all look so festive and colorful, so with my sketchbook in my lap and a freshly brewed coffee from one of the stalls, I felt free to have some fun painting my world orange, and then, once I was on my way through the drawing, I added colors, but still sort of limited my palette, so I could repeat some of the bright colors that stood out to me. You’ll notice a repetition of purple and pink, which is all due to that lady with the pink baret on the left hand side of the page. Her outfit was so colorful, that she inspired my limited palette.
As I was working, I was thinking about how Inma Serrano works - her art is so bright and she knows exactly where to put punches of color. So I intentionally tried nudging myself to not stick to the actual precise colors that I saw, but be playful and creative.
My drawing still doesn’t have the lively, playful looseness that I see in Inma’s drawings, but a certain joy sparks off it when I see it. Ever since I saw Inma’s drawings for the first time many years ago, I feel so inspired, and I kind of feel like I’m an apprentice, learning and understanding a bit more with each drawing.
More about this process
When I started my drawing, I set a timer to go off every two minutes, so I could record the drawing process. This way, I could show step by step to my patrons how a drawing can be built. I made a video and published in on my Patreon page.
This kind of patrons-only content is highly appreciated by those who are my patrons, and I really enjoy sharing this kind of footage with them. Since you’re reading this article, I think you’d like my Patreon page as well. It’s easy to sign up for it. Check out my Patreon page osjekoeneand see if any of the tiers fit you. I hope to see you there soon!
