Urban Sketching with AERO COLOR Professional - Jens Hübner
"The last phone box in Erkrath"
Urban Sketching is a very trendy art style. Moments of daily life are sketched and painted sometimes immediately, sometimes later, in a sketch book, on paper – whatever. What counts is to spontaneously paint of an ordinary or exceptional scene, sketched and coloured in a relaxed manner. As, for example, „The last phone box in Erkrath“, seen and sketched by our artist Jens Hübner.
A pre-sketch is made with the AERO COLOR Professional LINER No. 2, filled with finest acrylic ink in black (AERO COLOR Professional). The phone box as an artificial object gives a visible contrast to the natural forms of a tree in the background as well as to the green in the foreground.
Step 2
The LINER No. 6, an extremely wide marker, is filled with AERO COLOR Professional Pale grey or an own grey mixture out of SUPRA White, opaque and Black. Now, the background will be filled slightly.
Step 3
The phone box will be designed with a brush and AERO COLOR Professional Indian yellow, at the top with pure colour, to the bottom more and more bright adding some water. The in cabinroom gets a slight coloration with Sienna as well as small details in Black. The green in the foreground has to be coloured with Titanium yellow green shade.
Step 4
Now the people in the foreground can be sketched with the LINER No. 2. In order to let diffuse forms appear human-like it is sufficient to colourise the faces and hands with Flesh tint (a small brush is useful here). Basic rule: Colour has to be used economically in the background, the foreground emerges and dephth will be obtained by using intense colours.
The tree is worked out with brownish shadows in growth direction (mixtures out of Sienna, Black,water). Furthermore, all outlines have to be intensified with the LINER No. 2
Step 5
A short text can be written around the sketch with the LINER No. 2 – as an ornamental element of the picture, it can contain a title or information about the scene as well as the date.
Step 6
The grass in the foreground can be accentuated with a mixture of Ultramarine and Titanium yellow green shade. Some spots and splashes in Indian yellow can vivify the motive.
The artist
Jens Hübner was born in Mecklenburg, Germany, and works as a travel sketcher, graduate designer and author. During a two-year journey around the world by bicycle, he developed his own approach to drawing and watercolour painting while travelling. His work is shaped by conscious observation: places, people, architecture and landscapes are not simply documented, but carefully perceived and reduced to their essence.
As a lecturer, Jens Hübner shares his knowledge through courses, workshops and painting journeys around the world. He teaches how vivid sketches and watercolours can be created with simple tools, a few deliberate lines and a trained eye. His art invites viewers to experience the world more slowly, more intensely and with greater attention to detail.
