Sketching a Teashop in Myanmar

A few days ago, I posted about doing a Sketching PlayLab livestream with Paul Wang, where we chatted and sketched from a photo.

Here are some images from that session.

The top of this image is the photo reference we worked from. On the left of my sketchbook spread are a couple of quick warmup sketches, to help get familiar with the strange color palette we used and to think of what I wanted to capture in my sketch: I knew I’d want to draw the man pouring tea: but would he be in extreme closeup? Would I show more of his shop? I decided to experiment quickly to decide for myself before jumping into the piece on the right.

In the end, I felt I needed the full figure to capture the dynamism of his pose and that “just about to pour the tea” moment. Also, I could not resist sketching all the paraphernalia in that little shop that made it so interesting.

Here is a screenshot of the end of the session. You can see Paul’s wonderful piece in it.

And here is a closeup of my final piece.

Some of the things we talked about were warming up for a sketching session, the color palette we were playing with, our tools, how we would have gone about sketching this on location, and what attracted us to this scene and how we went about capturing what we wanted as the focus of our story.

The original colors and reference image we used are posted here. If you have the time for a long, meandering watch or want to sketch along while you watch, a recording of that YouTube live session is here.

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Are you spending more time online looking for inspiration? Usk Talks has a new series of talks that is live every Sunday and has some really inspiring artists talking aobut their process and projects.

Here are links to episode 1 and episode 2. I was so inspired by this Sunday’s episode, I scribbled lots of notes to myself as I listened. It was a wonderful way to begin my Sunday.