Splash and Scribble, Too

Splash and Scribble is a technique that Laurie Wigham learned at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Manchester, England and demonstrated for a Jack Laws' Nature Journal Workshop, viewable on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21CwatCN9j0

To paraphrase Laurie: Working with wet watercolor and watercolor pencils makes your journal sketching more lively and spontaneous. Instead of carefully drawing lines and then coloring them in, Splash and Scribble inverts that process. In this forgiving approach, you splash down loose watercolor shapes and then draw into those shapes to define the subject matter. You can feel your way gradually into a drawing, discovering the scene as you build it up.

We had lots of fun when Cathy brought Splash and Scribble to us.

SantaCon at Union Square in San Francisco

Until a few weeks ago I had no idea that there was such a thing as SantaCon, but clearly an awful lot of other people knew about it. There appeared to be thousands of people in red and white, stretching as far as I could see in every direction. I climbed up on the base of the monument to get a place where I could sit above the fray to sketch in peace and Cathy got this photo of me (see the green arrow.) I wore a red jacket for protective coloration but didn't want a tassel to get in the way of my sketching so left the Santa Hat at home.



Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, but there were cameras everywhere, making me wonder if it's still possible to know you're having a good time without constantly capturing photographic evidence to prove it?



The #RobotDanceParty moved slowly through the crowd blasting out music, and people obliged by breaking into wild dancing all around it (him?) But there was still a self-consciousness about it all: everything had to be captured on camera.


These nattily-dressed female reindeer seemed to be enjoying each others' company in a genuinely relaxed way, with only the occasional glance at a screen.

More from the Dickens Fair

After seeing Cathy's great Dickens post I thought I'd better put up my sketches from the day too. The Dickens Fair really is an amazing visual feast for sketchers. In addition to all the roaming characters, there is the Pre-Raphaelite Salon, where Dante Gabriel Rosetti reads his poems as Oscar Wilde and other characters from the period pose in tableaux from the poems.

   




In the windows of the Dark Garden corset shop, live models pretend to be wax dummies, holding poses long enough for quick sketches.




Here are some musicians and costumed spectators from the show in Mad Sal's Alehouse.

"Fanny" was one of a collection of women calling out bawdy remarks to passersby. She was settled down on the barrel long enough for me to get off a more detailed sketch.

There was a long wait for the ladies bathrooms, so I was able to sketch this woman ahead of me in the line.

Musée Mechanique

The very large and creepy Laughing Sal has terrified San Francisco children for generations. This sketch doesn't convey how truly weird she is. While I was sketching her, people would come by and put money in the slot to see her rock back and forth, waving her club-like fingers as a recording played echoing maniacal laughter.

The sketching group went to the Musée Mechanique in Fisherman's Wharf, with its collection of (mostly) antique penny arcade games and mechanical marvels.

These were both "Jolly Jack" puppets, from different cases, but their lumpy handmade faces (paper mache?) had very different personalities. They both had boneless slumping bodies and bizarre smiles, though. The longer I looked at them, the creepier they got.

On the bus on the way home I started drawing the woman on the left but she got off before I could do much. Fortunately the woman on the right stayed put longer.

Cal Sailing Club, 8 September 2013

The Cal Sailing Club in Berkeley generously welcomed the sketching group to their open house day. We sketched in between sail boat rides on the Club boats. 

Cal Sailing Club

The scene out on the bay was chaotic, with beginner windsurfers spending more time in the water than on the boards. But despite all the chaos, I didn't see any crashes.

On the Bay