You are Here--Making Maps of the Imagination

“Mapmaking fulfills one of our deepest desires: understanding the world around us and our place in it. But maps need not show just continents and oceans: there are maps to heaven and hell; to happiness and despair; maps of moods, matrimony, culture, from Gulliver’s Island to Gilligan’s Island; speculative maps of the world before it was known; and maps to secret places known only to the mapmaker. Artist’s maps show another kind of uncharted realm: the imagination. What all these maps have in common is their creators’ willingness to venture beyond the boundaries of geography or convention.” –from You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katharine Harmon.

The Market on Larimer Street

It's been chilly these past few mornings, so we headed inside The Market on Larimer Street.

 Here we are showing our works in progress.... completed drawings soon to come!

The Tattered Cover LoDo

Crazy snow! So here we are indoors at The Tattered Cover bookstore downtown today.... Using our imaginations to draw on site and into images that we find in these fantastic books and back out again... The goal is to play around with scale and space.

Drawings soon to come!

The 16th Street Mall

Finally a day to go out on the streets to draw Denver's famous 16th Street Mall!

Images soon to come!

Denver City Views

"Whether they're drawing from a window, a roof, or a hill, urban sketchers relish the opportunity to draw above ground level. The effort to find an elevated location pays off when you can draw a panoramic view." --from The Art of Urban Sketching by Gabriel Campanario, pg. 256

Here are some great views of Denver above, to the side, and below... shifting perspectives and points of view. We had the great advantage of access to the top floor of the CU Building, which is just across Speer Blvd. near the corner of 14th and Lawrence. There were fantastic views of the city from the DAC and DD computer labs as well as many of the office and side spaces.

Sketch by artist Jeanine Strasia

Sketch by artist Jeanine Strasia

Sketch by artist Jeanine Strasia

Sketch by artist Jessica Gutierrez

Sketch by artist Jessica Gutierrez

Sketch by artist Archie Dalton

"Most sketchers agree that patience is step number one for drawing architecture." pg. 262

Sketch by artist Archie Dalton

Sketch by artist Ethan Sares

Sketch by artist Ethan Sares

With these pieces, we were working on the upper view to the side, and then the downward perspective view, in looking to the streets below us. We also experimented with speed, working fast or slow across the spread of our books.

Sketch by artist Melissa Furness

Sketch by artist Danielle Whitney

Sketch by artist Danielle Whitney

Sketch by artist June Bobzin

Sketch by artist June Bobzin

Sketch by artist Mike Launder

Sketch by artist Mike Launder

Sketch by artist Kate Burlech

Sketch by artist Kate Burlech

Sketch by artist Forrest Hansen 

Sketch by artist Forrest Hansen

Sketch by artist Anders Englund

Sketch by artist Anders Englund

Sketch by artist Farooq Qureshi

Sketch by artist Farooq Qureshi

Sketch by artist Jordan Sibayan 

Sketch by artist Jordan Sibayan

Sketch by artist Jazmine Rosbia

Sketch by artist Jazmine Rosbia

Sketch by artist Sam Weston

Sketch by artist Sam Weston

Sketch by artist Curt Bean

Sketch by artist Curt Bean

People in Action

Once our fantastic books were completed, we began our venture into urban sketching with an independent project to go out and draw people in action. The main thing to remember about drawing people in action is that they are going to move before you’re ready. It’s inevitable. Real life never holds a pose. Once you are ok with that, urban sketching begins to open up for you. If your drawing process requires subjects to sit still, you will never be able to draw anyone outside of a subway car or cafe, or you may be entirely restricted in your subject matter in your urban sketching pursuits.

We want to unlock the ability to draw anyone, doing anything. To tell any story.

Sketch by artist Archie Dalton

sketch by artist Erin Ryan

Our process went as follows: Pencil > Pen > Brush (Pen) >Gouache

• PENCIL - The Gesture aka “The Cloud Scribble” aka “The Ball of String”: An instantaneous “single” line capturing volume, posture, clothing, and narrative . A gesture is so fast, you can capture any subject, no matter how active. It is the scaffold you will build on. It’s the map you will follow.
 To begin this type of line, place your pencil down on the page, and keep it down at all times as your eyes dart about the urban environment and you train your hand and your eye to work together to quickly respond to what you see occurring before you.

Sketch by artist Ethan Sares

• PEN - Line Drawing: The Line Drawing is done right on top of the Gesture. Prioritize the important stuff first. Clarify edges of the most significant forms. Your subject is probably walking away about now, unless you’ve chosen someone who can’t escape. (Workers are good, street performers, people playing sports).


sketch by artist Shiyang Han

• PEN (broad mark/brush) - Spotting Blacks: Properly Spotted Blacks are organized to focus the eye and indicate mass or weight. Darks should cluster around the area of interest and fade out to the edges. Small cast shadows also indicate volume and ‘contact’ with a surface. After this part, you have a solid drawing, so you can go back and erase some of the gesture if you like a cleaner sketch.
 I generally enjoy the energy of the gestural line and leave it in the work to add to the feeling of activity.

Sketch by artist Jessica Gutierrez

• GOUACHE - Color Washes: This is the easy part – because this is most likely done after the subject is long gone. But you have your drawing to guide you. Now you get to have fun and make the sketch come to life! Go outside the lines. Use a big brush. The drawing is the scaffold, holding everything up. The color can be playful and it all still works. This is also the time for some opaque retouching with gouache if you like.

Sketch by artist Jeanine Strasia

Sketch by artist Jeanine Strasia

Sketch by artist Jeanine Strasia

Sketch by artist June Bobzin

Sketch by artist Mike Launder

Sketch by artist Jordan Sibayan

Sketch by artist Anders Englund

How to Make a Hand-Made Hard-Bound Book

So, before we began our urban sketching outings, we first learned how to make our own hand-made, hard-bound book. Quite a feat within itself! You can certainly make a book of any size that you wish; however, ours are 10 x 13 inches, which opens up to a fantastic drawing spread of 10 x 26 inches. Perfect for urban panoramas. 

Above is an exampled of the book style that we produced. It's great to use your own decorative paper--this is a screen print, and then book cloth used to bind the spine and pull the book together.

We worked together in class on this across approximately 2.5 days of class time (about 6.5 hours of class work plus some paper/board cutting prep), with drying times for the books to be properly weighted, etc... 

I made a series of youtube demo videos for this a few years back to help with this process. (Do note that the size of the book that I demo in the videos is a bit different. You can easily adapt to any size of book that you wish to create.) If your are interested, take a look and make your own book to take out on site with you! 

Note: These aren't perfect! I hope to update them soon with  better views, but they will show you the process if you listen well... :)

#1 – Materials and Prep (overview of materials, cutting paper and book board)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMqKHR2vfqk 

#2 – Finishing the Prep (finishing up prepping the paper, folding into sections, pressing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppCDcy_aixE

#3 – Covering the Book Board (covering the book board with decorative paper)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13awBACHf74

#4 – Finishing up Covering the Book Board (finishing up covering the book board with decorative paper, creating a book bed for punching holes, a look at some other types of books that you can make, how to make a hole-punching guide)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZO1guLuV4

#5 – Prepping your sections (finishing up hole-punching guide, punching the holes in the sections, trimming pages, sewing the text block
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSXKWD5gA0

#6 – Sewing the Text Block (finishing up sewing the text block)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYR62R_Qa5k

#7 – Prepping the Text Block (gluing up the spine of the text block and adding end bands)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWP_vDRDUCk

#8 – Text Block and Cover Prep (finishing up prepping the text block, connecting the covers and adding book cloth)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbk4qQqfDiw

#9 – Casing in the Book (finishing up adding the book cloth to the cover and beginning to case in the text block)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Q7lWxQNjo

#10 – Finishing the Book (finishing up casing in the book)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzliaDZZ4L4&list=UUvrncnG-LUnDxGraPafgEBg&index=1