Continuing with ideas for easy ways to capture the moments, consider an impressive, but equally intimidating place – Notre-Dame de Paris.
Visualize that you are sitting in the Place de Jean Paul on a sunny day, the courtyard in front of Notre Dame. There is always a lot of activity, you ponder the church and get enamored by the people. But, how to capture such a moment easily? I know I am a stuck record on this but it is important: to capture the moment it is not required that you create a masterpiece suitable for the museum across the river; the Louvre. So where to begin.
First, I used light dots on the page to lay out the basic shape, not lines.
Next using just yellow ocher watercolor with my wet water-brush I lay out the shape of the building. There is not any detail, just shape. I did add the low buildings on either side of the church but it would have worked without.
After doing this just sit and watch the show as the paint dries, on a sunny day it won’t take long but why hurry, you are absorbing the moment as well as capturing it.
After it is dry I used yellow ocher darkened with a bit of sepia to add the horizontal lines that divide the structure. I added the line across the top of the tower, the visible left side of the right tower, and roughly did the arched areas of the three doors. Note that I was not terribly precise.
Then I added the main pillar and railing shapes with the paint, just shapes, not details. You see detail when you are looking at it because your brain is working for you, but it makes it harder for a sketcher. Try squinting and it will look a lot like this.
Our cathedral is taking shape, but it needs more. Dark, even black make the shapes stand out.
I added the windows in the towers with just a brush stroke, no detail needed, did the same with the doors, and the windows next to the round rose window. I made the window in the top level a bit lighter because they looked that way, but dark would have been fine.
TIP – When painting a round object our instinct is to outline it and then fill in, usually with less than satisfactory results. Instead start with some paint in the center and push it out until it is the size and shape you want – think of stretching pizza dough into a circle.
For capturing the moment this would actually work, most anyone would recognize this iconic sight, but let’s take it up just a notch with a 02 or 03 Micron pen.
I really did not want to just outline, so I kept that pretty loose. Short vertical lines indicated the railings, a couple of lines over the windows and doors showed the arches, again just an indication. I did go around the window a bit and showed some rays out from the center.
You have now sketched Notre Dame while immersed in the place. Write in the date, a few notes and you will have a memory for the future.
If you want to kick it up a notch, make it even better as far as the time and place add a few people, don’t panic, as it is quite easy.
First of all notice that all of the people, regardless of how near or far they are, have the same eye level, that is the secret to making it work. It is the size of the person that makes them appear near or far. Here is a link to a post of mine about a simple way to do people in a sketch like this.
I hope you are enjoying these ideas, links to them are on my Tips page in this blog. And of course I am always available for questions and help. Thanks for following, and keep on sketching.
theTravelsketcher 