I had one of those ‘duh’ moments this week when several observations just clicked into place for me.

I was watching a sketchbook ‘tour’ video by British artis Lis Watkins (link below), admiring, yet again, her excellent use of white space and the restrained use of detail in her work.

Later in the evening I was sketching online with friends and was really happy with the outcome of my sketch of this bowl of peeled limes. Of course I’d left lots of space around it and felt no need to include all of the bowl in my drawing.

Obviously I was reacting to seeing Lis’ work and when drawing objects this approach seems a pretty natural one for me to use.

On the other hand when I sketch on location,  wearing my ‘Urban Sketchers’ hat I often fall into the convention of ‘filling’ the page. I think if you look back to my previous post ‘Practice, practice‘ you can see what I”m referring to. I took a photo early on in the process and the sketch was pretty much ‘there’. I then kept going and looking back on it now, I  realise I should have stopped much sooner!

So this week I’m consciously trying to save some white on my page, while simultaneously keeping sufficient  ‘location’ information in my sketch*.

I am liking the look of this sketch. It’s certainly a challenge to balance both space and location. I’m sure I can do this.

*If you’re not familiar with Urban Sketchers, the international sketching organisation, it’s primary goal is to encourage people to sketch on location, and that location needs to be visible (in some form) in the sketch.

Lis’ video of her sketches from recent travels is linked here: