PERSCRIPTA

Visiting my hometown

Shortly after I started using watercolour, I began to avidly look for new challenges and new models to sketch. But, as it usually happens to me (and I guess other people share this feeling, too), when I take up a new activity or I start doing something, I always try to do it perfectly well, thinking about what I want to sketch twice beforehand and not being very self-confident. It happened to me that I was going to pay a visit to my parents and friends in the village where I lived for over 19 years. I would spend two days, so I wanted to come back with a sketch from that place, it didn’t matter what it was about, but I wanted it to be special.

Unlike other people, I don’t like my hometown even though I have good memories of it and my family lives there. It’s simply that I can’t consider I belong to that place nor to any other one as people normally do. I don’t feel a connection to the people living there except for my family and best friends. Maybe it’s sad or maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t force myself to feel something I don’t. In the same way, I can’t identify myself with a country, with a flag, with a language. I’m just a citizen of the world. And it is this fact I feel so proud of. Sketching is, as I understand it, catching a moment in a place and being able to catch the atmosphere no matter the location, the people or the culture you’re in.

That explained, I got to the village and I decided to sketch a kind of monument placed in a hill where I used to go with my friends to spend our time. I stayed the whole evening there with a friend talking about the monument: when it had been built, who had built it… In spite of having been in that place so many times, we never noticed the presence of the monument as we did that day. But we always valued that place, as we were normally intruders who had to jump over a fence or a gate to enter. There, we would talk about major issues we would care about (something that the rest of children or teenagers with the same age wouldn’t do, as they would be drinking alcohol or something like that).

The day I sketched the monument was really hot and sunny, and that’s what I tried to achieve. Made of stone, it reflects the season perfectly. In summer, it usually seems a pastoral landscape and it becomes the ideal place to read a book completely alone. In winter, the stone loses the warm tones it gets in summer and it’s a darker and colder place. What I like about it is that whatever the external changes, the religious sculpture at the top remains the same, watching the village and taking care of it.

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You can see my artwork on my Flickr account.

October 16th, 2014

My first sketch in watercolor

I’ve been rejecting the idea of trying watercolor for a while. I started drawing in May, copying photographs including portraits and landscapes. Later, I was seduced by charcoal and I continued drawing portraits and landscapes but always from a photograph. It was in July when I found about Urban Sketchers and I got caught by the manifesto and the challenge it supposed for me to start drawing on location and forgetting about copying. Thus, I saw lots of sketches but I didn’t feel inspired. I thought that every sketch was so good and the technique so complex that I could never get something like that. A hot evening in the middle of July, I went to the yard and looking at the ugliest corner of my house, I found a pile of plastic chairs, an old table and two buckets. It was perfect. The first problem was to frame what I wanted to sketch. Once I started, however, everything was solved naturally.

That crucial sketch was made with a pencil and later I added ink. Later, I bought the book Urban Sketching by Thomas Thorspecken. At first, I felt that I had wasted my money on a book that was mainly focusing on watercolor. And I repeated to myself that I was not going to use watercolor. At the beginning of August, I found myself buying online a pack of Pentel waterbrush and a watercolor book. I kept on sketching a church near the town where I’m currently living, but again, using pencil, ink and colored pencils (which produced an effect I didn’t like very much…).

Finally, I decided to use my watercolor book. I was determined to sketch something, and I didn’t need to go out of home. I looked over the house searching a good corner and I found the heater and an armchair. It was perfect to start. After spending some time organizing the sketch, I completed it with a pencil. Later, I used ink, as before. I liked so much the result that I was afraid of using watercolor. I didn’t want to ruin the sketch! I waited for the next day and I started to read about mixing colors, water, paper… I tried to get a grey and I got a muddy horrible color. I tried again and again. I couldn’t get a grey but I found a similar color that I liked and I ended up applying it. I liked the result so much and I had lots of fun during the process. I’m eager to do the next one.

(This post was published on the official Urban Sketchers website on the 14th of September, 2014)

Also, you can see my artwork on my Flickr account.

September 16th, 2014