Top tip for urban sketching: live somewhere urban!

Here goes with the blindingly obvious:  in order to be an ‘urban sketcher’, some ‘urban’ would be very useful. We however live in a small rural village, where the architectural style varies from red brick with tile, to, well, tile with red brick.  My burnt sienna sees a lot of action. I thought perhaps that a view over Guildford might offer something new subject wise, so I made some sandwiches and proposed a picnic up a hill. We got there to find that architecturally there was little on offer; yet more tile roofs interspersed among some dead winter trees wasn’t exactly inspiring. But we had a bit of rare spring sunshine, good sandwiches, a beer, a contented dog, and the Sunday paper and once I got around to giving the view a try, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable.  Whether it qualifies as urban sketching is another matter.

Another day another trip into Guildford. This is a view of the back of Quarry Street, which I have always liked, as it is such a motley collection of styles, shapes, materials and colours.  Some of the buildings date back to the sixteenth century, and were presumably quite modest originally.  Over time they have been re-modelled and extended, hence the current wonderful clutter of additions, accretions and addendum that must span centuries; legible history to the more architecturally literate. Which is all very well and good, but it is quite a befuddling jumble to draw!

I don't know if the new buildings sprouting up around Guildford University will be quite so characterful or interesting, but at least the building site provided me with a bit of new subject matter.  I have started carrying a small wax birthday cake candle in my pencil case, thinking it would be useful for keeping white areas masked while painting.  I had birch trees in mind originally, but actually when faced with trying to indicate the forest of scaffolding around the buildings, it turned out to be very useful indeed. I'm terribly cross with myself for ending up with the crane in the page crease!