For this exercise, I was asked to choose two locations and walk the route between them, taking my sketchbook along with me. The brief explained that this could be anywhere and involve anything, but it should have visual diversity. It didn’t need to be a long journey, but a variety of architecture, colours, and content was encouraged. As the focal point of this exercise was to walk outdoors along a route whilst drawing, it wasn’t very accessible to me. I discussed how to approach this exercise with James Pyman, head of Visual Communications, and we agreed that following a route using google maps on street view would suffice.
The goal of the exercise was to absorb the environment I was viewing and use my sketchbook to document it using rough visual shorthand. I was asked to try both quick and loose sketches and slower, more sustained work. I spent a few days considering what route I would ‘walk’ using google maps, conscious of the fact I wouldn’t be getting the full sensory experience. I thought about places that were meaningful to me or that I had strong sensory attachments to – places I had been repeatedly or had experienced intense emotions in. I wanted to be able to tap into these feelings and to express that in my sketches somehow.
I settled on the route I walked almost daily when I spent a month in Slovakia in 2015. It’s a simple route, from the house I was staying into the local supermarket, but it is a journey I can remember so vividly. I visited Slovakia on an artist’s Erasmus trip, so I spent the majority of my time being creative – however, I didn’t use nor even own a sketchbook at the time. I was so excited to return to somewhere so meaningful to me and to be able to capture it in a new way. If you’d like to follow along, you can find the route here. Just use Streetview to navigate!
When selecting content to draw, I focused on elements of the journey that I felt were the most interesting or the most memorable from when I was there in person. Looking back, I’m not sure how accurately my sketches portray the route from point A to point B, but I feel it’s apparent where I was. I used a range of materials from my travel tool kit. I began by using my trusty 1.0 fineliner – which is perfect for rapid and thoughtless sketching – then moved on to using a smaller nibbed writing pen in order to accurately draw the details on buildings. When it came to adding colour, I mainly relied on my watercolour palette, but I did use one brush pen right at the end. Waiting for the watercolour to dry was tricky – if I were to do this on-site, I would need to invest in some waterproof ink pens. I’m grateful I was indoors and able to wait in the warmth before adding linework! Switching between rapid sketches and more sustained work came naturally, depending on the subject of my sketch. By the end, I found I had settled into a midpoint that felt comfortable to me. A mix of rapid outlines and detailed elements just felt right.
Using Google Maps presented some difficulty. Due to the nature of the website, the angles of the photographs and how close you can get to the off-road areas is very limiting – not being able to control what I was seeing and where I was viewing it from frustrated me. It was awkward and tricky choosing content in some ways, as I would attempt to move the camera and be unable to. I was very aware that I was missing out on a key aspect of drawing from life. I’d like in the future to try to build in more sketching of the world around me when out and about, but it’s a distant goal.
Despite these challenges, I really enjoyed the whole process! I especially liked not having to think too hard about what I was drawing whilst still feeling fulfilled by each sketch. I’m surprised with how much I like the outcome – these sketches have so much character and life to them. I feel it’s a testament to how far I have already come in this unit – some of these unfinished and rough pieces would have previously killed my confidence. Going forward, I would quite like to repeat this exercise with the many other places I have visited worldwide.
Learning Log 