USK Symposium - Day Two!

Day two of the Symposium was really just as awesome as day one. It started out with a panel discussion with some of the instructors of the previous day's workshops. I really like that - it was like a critique or a debriefing, plus we got to hear about what was going on in workshops that we didn't attend since, unfortunately, you can't go to all of them.

The first workshop I took on Friday was Lynne Chapman's Quick-on-the-Draw. Lynne is so full of energy and so is her line, which she refers to as "sexy line." We all just went to town with the sexy line. Look at that tree! Sexy!

Slightly less sexy, but fun to do!

I love this sketch, if I do say so myself. It was important to me during these workshops to retain what is important to me in my work, quality of line and quality of marks (in oil painting it would be the brushstrokes). I feel like I really did that with this sketch. Plus I really put a lot of thought into it, but managed not to over-think it.

Lynne then had us create vignettes of the activities and sights in the plaza and tie them together using text. I really loved this exercise, and there was plenty to capture in this small plaza on a tiny intersection in the Colonial Zone, including Roberto the tour guide, pigeons pigeons everywhere, a guy painting on a canvas that he was holding up in front of him, an old man with both a pompadour and long straight hair going down his back, a wreck between an SUV and a police car, and a very old man working hard at sweeping the plaza.

Look at all of that color!

After a yummy shrimp crepe for lunch, I went to my second workshop of the day, Architecture - Personal Views with Liz Steel and Frank Ching. It was a bit intimidating to be drawing architecture for just a couple of hours with someone who has taught architecture for almost as long as I've been alive. Another participant had a story about one of Frank Ching's text books (um, that he wrote) being ever present in their university department. They called it "The Ching." Anyway, it was still super fun! I just had to loosen up a bit, also slow down a bit, and just pay attention.

We were kicked out of the cathedral because it was closing time, so we sat outside to draw the facade. Frank gave me several pointers and after a couple of false starts I ended up with this sketch of the church.

At one point it started to rain and we all ran up to the entrance, where I drew the lady on the left there, who was perched above me.

After the rain stopped I went back to my spot to work on the facade some more, but mostly ended up drawing people and patterns.

Here are our architectural sketches perched on an architectural feature.

It was fun to see how everyone else approached the subject, and there were some fantastic sketches!

This workshop definitely pushed me farther out of my comfort zone than the others did, which is what this event is all about.

At dinner that night I went right back to my comfort zone of drawing food.