Monte Carlo, Monaco; #2 pencil
Sketching the Cityscape
City and town are filled with visual excitements and are some of the
best subjects to sketch on location. Cityscape tends to be dominated by
buildings, but it is the spaces between buildings that become the most
attractive thing of all. In addition to the different styles of architecture,
street furnishings such as streetlights, signs, awnings, storefronts, and
display windows all contribute to enhancing the colorful street life. This
sort of multidimensional space is ideal, as it has all the proper ingredients
to make a good sketch. They include: a controlled space with strong ver-
tical and horizontal reference planes; interesting architecture; great
potential to manipulate light and tonal values; and most important of all, a
scale which allows the viewer to walk right into the space through the
sketch. The emotional affinity possible in this kind of sketch is far more
seductive than a wide-open landscape.