Hurricane Irma blew the wind out of the sails of the 5th Orlando Urban Sketch Workshop that was held at the Ultimate Art Party in Tavares Florida. I decided to reschedule that class since so few artists attended. The next week we met at House of Blues in Disney Springs. When I arrived artists were already gathered at the iconic rusty water tower. We looked for a location where I could talk without the canned in Disney music. I thought we would hang out in a grassy area, but the lawn had loud speakers. We ultimately walked across the courtyard to a bunch of benches a short distance from House of Blues.
I had everyone work small on thumbnail drawings. This allowed us all to do a series of sketches rather than one long sketch. I executed this sketch quickly as everyone worked. I encouraged everyone to limit their color palettes so this sketch was just in sepia tones and then I added color later. The large cement courtyard between us and the water tower gave a good ground plane for me to explain how to populate a sketch.
We did 5 minute studies of each artist in turn as they looked at their cell phone or sketched. With all those quick sketched done I asked the artists to create a ground plane using two point perspective and then copy several of the quick 5 minute figure studies onto the grid. The figure studies were like chess pieces on a chess board. Pieces in the foreground were larger, and pieces in the background grew smaller.
Live music could be heard coming from the House of Blues, so the last exercise was to approach the music and draw the crowd gathered to listen as well as the musicians. I executed a second tiny sketch while everyone found a spot and got to work. We then returned to the benches to see each others work and take some photos. It was a fun night and I think the attendees age getting a feel for the excitement of working on location.