School zone

After a beautiful autumn weekend, it’s back to school for me. I sketched on the way to class today, on a side street near the campus. I would have liked to add a few more details to this but time did not permit. It’s almost mid-term and my students are working hard on projects and preparing for quizzes in my classes.

I spent Saturday in Ottawa doing a repeat teaching session of my Chicago workshop “Trees and the City”. It was a perfect day for sketching —  a little cool in the morning but bright and sunny all day. As always when I teach, I never take enough photos but fortunately Cindi Foreman from the Ottawa Urban Sketchers took tons of great photos and wrote a blog post of the event. Thanks again Cindi for all your help making this happen, and to Winsor & Newton for the sponsorship!

SchoolDistrict


18 Comments on “School zone”

  1. Bernadette says:

    Lovely lesson in simple shapes and color. I try hard to hold these beautiful images in my mind as I paint. Too often I overthink and over paint. Thanks for the eye candy.

  2. Gil Zarins says:

    Just love the looseness and spontaneity of your sketches, I agree with the above description “eye candy”.

  3. Leslie Blackwell says:

    A great demonstration of simplifying masses. Thanks, Shari!

  4. Shari, I’m curious…do you do a quick pencil sketch before watercolor or just jump in and begin painting?

  5. This is a spot that most people would drive by and not even think about, but you turned it into a lovely piece! I’m going to go look at the blog post about the workshop now.

  6. my absolute favorite part of this is the lettered sign. I love urban typography!

  7. andre savard. says:

    Amazing how you can turn a simple scene into an interesting picture. One can walk thru it and see all the details and admire them and then follow the imaginary walk to the end of the road.
    Love it.

  8. Judy Sopher says:

    Just went thru the blog about your workshop in Ottawa. I am so envious. Love the painting at the beginning also. I am finding it is harder and harder to park along streets to paint where I would like to paint. But you do this so well. Must keep trying. Thanks for all the inspiration.

  9. Mary King says:

    Shari, you are amazing. You take them most normal daily sights and turn them into something spectacular. You help me see that I need to just look around and sketch and paint what I see anywhere!!


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