By Karen Stopnicki

The demo at the May General Membership was a real treat! Board members Cissy Geigerman, incoming Gallery Co-Director, and Irene Sheytman, Co-Vice President, joined to show their art-on-the-go tips.

Cissy began with showing her lovely sketchbooks and spoke about how she got started with Urban Sketching. She likes to observe scenes when she travels, and took up Urban Sketching to learn capture what she sees. In sharing her “travel kit”, she showed us her sketchbooks, favoring the Stillman and Birn Beta series. She has a small palette box that she purchased at JoAnn’s Fabrics and has refilled her favorite colors. Her real secret to success is a water filled brush, like the ones made by Arteza. She did a demo of a coastal scene, beginning with a pencil sketch, then adding watercolor and completing the painting with pen lines.

Next up, Irene said she buys inexpensive mixed media sketchbooks, and uses a well-loved small pencil kit that holds a pencil, several waterproof Micron pens in black and brown, plus her secret weapon, the Elegant Writer pen which has a lovely effect when wet. She shared that she likes to use her sketches as reference for paintings and has better results than using a photograph. The sketches and corresponding watercolors she showed drove that point home. She gave us a simple yet highly informative lesson on one-point and two-point perspective.

Thank you so much to Cissy and Irene… your demos, tool tips and conversation about sketching on the go were inspiring! Personally, I can’t wait to put some of their tips in action during my travels this summer.