Friday, October 27, 2006

Café Croquis


Pen and sepia ink sketches in a Moleskine sketchbook, October 2006
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I learned this month that "croquis" is the french for "sketch" and that "cahier de croquis" is a sketchbook. I run out of titles for these pen and ink drawings that I do all the time when eating in cafes - hence the explanation! ;) These quick sketches were done while sitting in the V&A Cafe in London while attending the two courses I did last week.

I find they're great for not only practising my drawing and "keeping my eye in" (which I find is vital) but they're also good for trying to find compositions in my everyday surroundings. Not that I eat in a cafe every day but you know what I mean!

And just for fun - try putting "cahier de croquis" into your search engine and seeing what you come up with.

PS I know cafe has an accent on the 'e' - but Blogger seems to be having a love/hate relationship with that accent!

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7 comments:

  1. Karl - Thanks for your comment.

    I appreciate what you're saying but personally I find that about half or more of the blogs I visit require some controls on people who comment - not least to avoid those awful spam robots. I know people who have suffered them and it's not nice........

    I've also been subjected to/seen troll behaviour on other blogs in the past. I very much prefer to not make this something my viewers ever have to read so I don't plan on making it too easy for them for them to do it again!

    I believe in free speech but I also recognise that we need to be a bit careful on the internet. See my comments policy (link in the right hand column) for further explanation

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  2. You make these cafe sketches look so easy - (I don't know why you can't see most of the pictures on my blog - They are all scanned the same way, most less than 70 kb - I just can't think of any reason and no one else has notified me of such a problem ???

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  3. Wonderful drawing.
    I was attracted.
    Thank you.
    Your link to Brog was found with Brog of PMBC.

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  4. lovely sketches Katherine,those people look so animated,engaged with each other,the looseness shows it's only a moment

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  5. Great idea of "keeping my eye in". I've never heard this term before. I love your sketches, and am in awe of anyone who sketches in pen. I need to do more sketching, I think you've inspired me to take my Moleskine with me when I'm out of town for a few days.

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  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  7. Drawing with a pen is what helped to make the sketching flow. It's just impossible to draw quickly with a pen if you're going to worry about getting every line absolutely spot on all the time.

    I started drawing with a pen when doing the first half hour of quickie poses in life drawing class - and found very quickly that my sketching and drawing improved as a result.

    I recommend anybody who is hung up on 'being perfect' to go and take a look at the sketchbooks of really great artists and note how relaxed a lot of the drawing is.

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