From Miro to a beach playground

July 15, 2016

Rethinking my approach to sketching
While visiting the Miro Museum in Barcelona, it occurred to me that I felt stuck in my approach to sketching. I was tired of drawing city scenes and architecture. I just wasn’t inspired to do that again. Miro is always an inspiration, so visiting the Miro Museum came at the perfect time.

My original pen and ink drawing

A few days later, while in San Sebastian, it sort of clicked for me and I started taking shapes I was seeing around me and making imaginary constructions with them. The kids’ playground on the promenade offered numerous interesting interacting and overlapping shapes happening, so I took them as a starting point. The drawings ended up being rough, rather crude pieces that were fine at the time. Later (much later) I still liked the energy in them and felt they might be interesting enough to expand upon. That is what I did with this piece.
The original drawing was intentionally created quickly, not letting myself dwell on technique or perfection, but allowing it to be unrefined.

Adjusting structural elements in a new sketch

When I decided to create a colored vector version of this image, there was a need to create a new sketch in order to clarify how the pieces held together, adding detail in many areas so that it made sense. That gave me a solid guide to follow for actually drawing out all the specific vector lines for the final piece.

Finalizing the new vector artwork

Even with a tighter pencil drawing to follow, I find there are almost endless areas that can need further thinking and development – areas that have some awkward shape in them or need help connecting to adjacent elements in an intentional way. Finally, color is almost always a big challenge – to reach a point where it feels ok overall. For that reason, I prefer to begin using a limited color palette, and add new colors as needed.