I work quicker than most, but there are times when I find myself looking for abbreviated ways of recording. This might be due to a lack of available time, or perhaps a subject needs only a few simple shapes and patterns to achieve a likeness. Bicycle (left) is an example. Wet streets unify the values of reflecting and reflected shapes; the colour palette is narrow and indicative, it’s a simple one-point perspective with some polarised lights and darks, and wet in wet on the street nails the character.
I’m constantly sketching en plein air, where time often is at a premium, and I like good light for its broad, more expressive range of values to record. My sketches are rarely a precursor to further work; they are just records enjoyed in the moments of their making.
(below left) was completed while my wife to represent heads, shoulders and torsos of customers, making marks and building shapes that impinged on me as I looked at each part of the scene. If you were to zoom around the image in close up, individual passages would probably not make much sense; they are abstract representations or summaries of shapes, tones, edges, directions, degrees of contrast and varieties of scale which hopefully come together to depict a recognisable reality.
