Urban Sketches by Virginia Pendergrass.
“I love seeing another country through an artist’s eyes,” Brevard artist Virginia Pendergrass decided after a painting trip to France. “Representational painting forces you to really see.”
However, the weight of oil painting equipment, setup and clean up time, and managing transport of painted canvases, were aggravating while traveling. She wanted another approach for her trip to Quebec City, Canada last year.
By chance, she came across Marc Taro Holmes’ book Urban Sketching (North Light Publications). Further exploration on the web led her to www.urbansketchers.com, where urban sketchers worldwide show their work. “Seeing the world, one drawing at a time” is the motto on the website.
Pendergrass loved Holmes’ accessible process of scribble pencil drawing, followed by pen and ink, and finished with watercolor. But she especially loved that ample sketching equipment fits in a tote bag, water cleanup on site is a snap, and paintings are dry for transport the next day. Completing an urban sketch is also relatively quick, which allows time for seeing sights, talking with traveling companions, and eating great food.
To learn this new art form, she made small ink and watercolor sketches in her studio, and copied watercolors of other artists. Finally, she ventured into the streets of Ashevillle, which led to another delightful discovery – outdoor cafes welcome painters to sit comfortably at their tables during slow times. Asheville’s Bomba Restaurant at Pack Square was the host for her sketch “Jackson Building – Downtown Asheville.”
“This discovery came in handy in Quebec City,” Pendergrass relates. “It was drizzly in the Basse Ville – not ordinarily a good painting day – but I noticed a covered open-air cafe with a view of the Notre Dame de Victoire church. The waitstaff, setting up for lunch, invited me to sit at one of the tables as long as I liked.” The result was the urban sketch “Notre Dame de Victoire.”
Pendergrass experimented with a watercolor technique, known as growing a wash, for the first time in Quebec City. Growing a wash is a continuous infusion of different colors into adjacent wet watercolor. She especially likes the feel of this technique for romantic lighting or moody weather in sketches of skylines. “Frontenac Towers” was painted from the river-side promenade by the historic Frontenac Hotel in Quebec’s Haute Ville. These landmark spires can be seen throughout Quebec City towering above other rooftops.
Back home in Brevard, NC, Pendergrass is continuing her urban sketching in Asheville and surrounding small towns. “Wherever I set up to paint,” she says, “passers-by make encouraging comments like ‘You go, girl,’ or ‘It’s great to see an artist painting,’ or ‘I love your painting!’ The last is my favorite, of course.”
In February, 2016 Pendergrass will introduce her urban sketches of Quebec City and France in the exhibit “Bonjour and Bienvenue,” on display at her new space in Trackside Studios, 375 Depot Street in the River Arts District.
In March, her “Sketches of Asheville and Surrounding Towns” will be shown in the Asheville Gallery of Art, 82 Patton Avenue, in downtown Asheville.
View more works by Virginia Pendergrass at www.virginiapendergrass.com
If You Go: Urban Sketches by Virginia Pendergrass, Trackside Studios, 375 Depot Street in the River Arts District. Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday.