Urban Sketching:
Essential Pen & Line Techniques
Everything in an urban sketch is held together by line. These exercises start with the pens themselves, which size to reach for and why, then teach you to give a line character, to hatch for tone and texture, and to read how line is working in real sketches from Arizona, Wisconsin and Paris. A solid base before Line Work Level 2.
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What’s Inside
The pens
We look at the different types and sizes of pen and why we use them in different ways, from the finest 0.05 fine liner right up to 0.5, and how the rollerball pen sits alongside them.
Using fine liners
These are my permanent fine liners, the tools I use for all my fine line work. I work with five sizes: 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5.
The pen roll
When you’re sketching on location you’re taking your studio outside, and you can’t rely on finding what you need on site. Everything lives in my pen roll, divided into three sections: fine liners, brush pens and watercolour brushes.
Take a line for a walk
At art college in London a tutor taught me something that came from Paul Klee: take a line for a walk, and let it have a life of its own.
Hatching techniques
I use hatching mostly in the Detail stage for two reasons: to introduce tone and to introduce texture. My hatching is always parallel lines going one way, usually with a 0.1 or a 0.2.
Line work in real sketches
Three sketches show what line is actually doing. In Arizona, the lines on the cacti change from thick to thin to thick, and the hatching on the Rincón Mountains is worked in layers, denser lines pushing things back.
Line in a Paris café sketch
Reverse-engineering the line work in a sketch of Le Consulat, a café in Montmartre. The line is really thick across the top of the building for drama, thin and soft towards the street, and breaks up into hatching and narrative marks at the bottom.
£8
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Questions about this bundle
What is in Urban Sketching: Essential Pen & Line Techniques?
7 short video exercises: The pens; Using fine liners; The pen roll; Take a line for a walk; Hatching techniques; Line work in real sketches; Line in a Paris café sketch. It costs £8 once and you keep lifetime access.
Do I need to have done a painting workshop first?
No. A bundle is a separate, self-contained set of exercises on one skill. If you later want to see skills like this used in a whole painting, my painting workshops do exactly that.
When can I enrol?
Enrolment opens soon. This page will show an Enrol button when it does.
Can I get a refund?
Yes, within 14 days of purchase, as long as you have not gone beyond the introduction or first lesson, because by then you have received the digital content. Email mike@artyfactor.com with the bundle name and the email you enrolled with. The full wording is in the Refund and returns policy.
How long do I have access?
It is one payment of £8 and you keep lifetime access.
Where this leads
Want to see the whole picture?
This bundle covers one skill. My painting workshops show how skills like this come together in a finished painting, one stage at a time.
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