Sketch Week with Adebanji Alade
Hello, hello. I’m back with a little write up of my experience of Sketch Week this November 4th - 8th.
Sketch week is a week-long online sketching course run by Artist and President of The Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Adebanji Alade. He has an fascinating life story, so do check out his website to find out more. He runs these weeks at various times throughout the year to share his skills and passion for sketching, and to promote enrolment to his Addictive Sketchers Movement. The latter being an online subscription platform for his sketching demo’s and critiques, and a community of fellow sketchers. In sketch week there was a daily lesson on a different subject over the course of five days and we were to use only graphite pencils. The cost was £10.
I decided to join Sketch Week after having a bit of a slump in creativity, really just due to the feeling of not having time for it in the busyness of life. And being tired. That too. I felt I needed a little bit of a kick-start to get me back in my sketchbook. I also joined because a self-taught artist, I’ve never particularly learned tried and tested techniques for making a sketch, steps you could take each time with any subject to get going. I just draw what I see to the best of my ability (or not sometimes, haha). Learning some fundamentals, especially in the values department, would do me no harm, so I thought I’d give it a go.
So how was it? Here’s a look at the sketches I made in my sketchbook…
The week was really enjoyable! I mostly did the classes a day or two after they went out live due to them being at my boys’ bedtime, and this enabled me to stop and start playback as needed. For the most part though, I managed to follow along with Aderbanji as he was going, I found the pace was good for me and I really learned a lot. Aderbanji broke each subject down in to such achievable steps, with such boundless enthusiasm, that the whole process became so much less intimidating. Looking at external angles, internal shapes, darks, mid-tones, highlights, and details, one by one these steps just made it make sense. I think using only one material, the humble pencil, helped too. The classes were not the most polished you’ve ever seen, but the substance was there in spades, and that’s what matters to me.
Other lessons learned were those things that I discovered about myself during the process. I noticed that I rush through some steps and that I’m often too heavy handed too early on in a sketch. I learned that I have a tendency to draw eyes way too big and that I need to be more purposeful and economical with my linework in order to not ‘muddy’ my subject. All super useful to know and to keep in mind in future.
Realism isn’t often my goal, I like to have a more naïve, illustrative style to my art, but the lessons I learned in this style can absolutely cross over, as can the monochrome values into the colours I so enjoy to use. I feel more confident in my ability to break down a face or a scene or an animal recognisably, and then let creativity take over from there. I have never managed to draw a realistic portrait IN MY LIFE, yet with little stress, and even with having a bit of fun, I managed to make two of them over the five days. They definitely needed more attention paid to getting a truer likeness, but they did look like fairly competent sketches of human beings, and honestly, I didn’t think I could ever do that! I really didn’t believe that was a skill I would ever have in me! Now I’m wondering if realism hasn’t ever been a goal because I thought it was out of my reach? Hmm. Food for thought…
I hope you enjoyed this little ramble about my experience of Sketch Week and that maybe now you’re pondering what possibilities are within you that are just hiding, waiting for you to discover them, just as I am… Thanks for letting me share.
Rebecca x
