- Hi, I'm Kath Macaulay This is Pocket Sketching, and what are we gonna do this time?

We're going to do food, and I'm hungry.

And one of the neatest things about it is it's ephemeral.

I've got food with me.

I got a piece of cake, and I'm starving, and I wanna eat it.

So we're gonna find out how to do it, what fun it is, and it's great practice for watercolor.

Come join me and have a good time with food pocket sketching.

(upbeat music) We're gonna do something today that I really, really enjoy doing, it is ephemeral, and it is fun.

I'm hungry, it's lunch time and today, it's going to be food.

Why food?

Because it's there, because it's fun, because it usually has color, because it has design, because you can do anything you want with it, but the biggie is you wanna get to it.

Usually, you've paid for it.

You can smell it, you're hungry.

We don't need a timer here because you're going to go as fast as you possibly can to get to the food.

So let's start.

I've got a piece of cake and a couple of implements.

And where do you start?

You start with a mark in the paper and Hmm, maybe I'm not ready to do that food.

Maybe I'm not, maybe I want the cup first.

Maybe the cup is easier, maybe, but the food's there and I'm hungry.

That is not changed.

So let's get a rim on this and I get to design with it.

I really get to design.

Let's put coffee in there.

This will tell me it's dark.

Okay, and now bring that cup down.

Now, I'm not sure where this piece of cake is going to integrate so to speak with a cup of coffee, incidentally if this is an oval here the one down here pretty much has to match it because I'm not right over the top.

So that's good enough.

Here comes the subject.

I think, I hope, this is gooeyness.

This is and I'm still hungry.

I'm still hungry.

Not going to forget that I'm hungry.

Go fast.

Here comes another piece of gooeyness.

And it's going to fade into.

where's the plate?

Didn't leave much room for it, did I?

Where's the plate?

Oh, well, Hey, it's mine.

It's my sketch.

If I make mistakes, I can live with them.

Plate gooey, gooey, gooey, gooey, gooey gooey, gooey, gooey, gooey, good, hungry hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry.

This is, it's amazingly fun.

It's amazingly fun because you really want to get to it.

You can do this with anything.

You can do it with pizza.

You can do it in a good restaurant.

You can get a sketch in before they bring your food after you've ordered and you can put anything that's in the room into the sketch and then the food arrives and you're on.

Okay, that's going to work.

Yep, I'm kind of licking my chops, really.

This is, it doesn't work.

It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if it works.

It never really matters.

I don't want this to go out the corner.

It happens to be bad design.

So we get a little bit of design in here too.

Will it look like a knife?

I don't know.

It looks like a cake.

The fork is more interesting, the fork.

So let's get the fork.

Let's try to get the fork.

Don't know, so far we're just roughing it in.

I got to get before I can eat.

I've got to get to color.

Yeah, by the way, I do this in my workshops and I don't tell people it's coming.

We go to lunch together and they order, their food arrives, and that's when I tell them they got to sketch it before they get to eat it and they've paid for it.

They can smell it.

They're hungry.

I know how that works.

I sketch it with them.

But then I've got experience.

They don't have the privilege of having done this a lot of times.

There's the rest of the plate.

Now let's get some of this cake in here because I haven't stopped being hungry.

The more I look at it, the hungrier I get.

This one's a yellow cake.

You know, I could make it chocolate.

You know, I could make a chocolate.

I like chocolate.

Why wouldn't I make it chocolate?

This part is chocolate in here.

We want to let you know that it's a little darker.

And then it's going to be a little darker here too.

The rich chocolate, and is there anything behind here?

I kind of, we just switched to demitasse because the cup is so small.

It's all mine.

I can change it any way I want at any time.

What if no, the plate can't be bigger because I'd like something over here though.

How about the table?

Really nice extra.

That helped, that helped the whole design.

There's that side and now I don't think I need anything else except to get it over with.

Where's the plate, it was coming out over here.

Well, so the plate isn't regular, it's an irregular plate.

Do I care?

Nope, where the darks?

Let's make the fork dark.

There it is.

And there's another, it's a three-tine fork.

I don't care what it really is.

It's three tines, mine.

Okay, yeah, and anything goes, I mean, it's food.

Now, if I wanted to, if there were something in the room that was important, I could put it into the background, but right now this is it.

And if this plate is in front of that cup get that edge so that you understand where it is.

Got the darks got the darks little bit of a shadow in here.

It's going to be important because it helps make the plate.

And there's a little bit of shadow in here and this is a toughie that silver, silver, the pen is gray.

I'm hungry.

So, let's get on with it.

This is, let me tell you this is really a fun thing to play with because you have food probably three times a day.

Every one of those is eligible and every one of them will give you more experience.

This food is teaching me how to do it.

Now, this is my last chance to decide between chocolate and lemon.

But it is lemon, it's a toughie, I'm gonna go back to lemon.

Why not?

So lemon that by the the color of this paint happens to be lemon yellow, lemon, and over here, I want to get the lemon and I bet it tastes good.

I bet it tastes like lemon.

The reason I went back to this was because the crumbs at the bottom are cool and I want to get those crumbs.

And because I've kind of messed it up I put it in the dark lines in I'm now going to throw them into, if you if you wiggle on those lines right away and a water-soluble pen, they will go into solution.

If you don't wiggle on them right away, they stay lines.

And in here, this is a richer, darker, warmer color.

It was the outside of the cake.

So go for it.

Get it.

That's cool.

Now that's also going to help with the crumb and I want the crumb to have a bit more color.

And the crumb is down in here.

It's going to have a little bit and I'm going to run that together in a minute.

It'll work.

Probably, never know.

I betcha it works I got a little lemon yellow in there.

Crumbs, crumbs a few crumbs.

They come right up here.

Okay, now a little bit of yellow.

I'm going to heighten that yellow at touch.

Just, it's up in here.

Just a bit yellow.

A little bit brighter.

There we go.

Now, bring that down here.

And it's in here and let's put it right there next to the fork.

Now don't touch that fork yet, because if I touch that now it's going to run right into this lemon.

Okay, this same wonderful burnt sienna got a little teeny touch of red in it is the edge of the cake in here.

And it comes along here.

It's actually you get to paint, You actually get to paint a tad on this and it's not so bad.

Then if it's that color, this would be too.

So change it.

Okay, now I've got to deal with the white.

I'm hungry.

I'm in the shadow, in the shadow.

How does it change?

First place it changes.

cause I'm getting hungrier and hungrier.

That's how it changes.

Who's kidding whom?

(laughs) There's the platter.

I may need to work a little bit more to get ah, over here.

It changes a tad.

I need a little bit of this kind of gunk.

The stuff in the lid of your box is not a dirty paint box.

The stuff in the lid of your box is premixed, dilute paint to be used as necessary.

Watch it color things ever so slightly.

If instead, if I went into my half pans this would be way too dark.

And instead it's good color.

That's the plate over there.

This is crumb.

Get some of that yellow crumb in there.

So it, this is just, but I got to remember I'm hungry.

Okay, why not put that into the plate and put it the plate.

I got a dark line.

I'm going to want white crumb.

Pick this dark line up and put it into the plate.

Here you go, there you go.

Now, bring it around like this.

There's a knife.

Okay, now come over here and get this one and bring it in here.

And it comes in like that.

Yeah, and then come out here.

What color is the table?

I don't know but I'm going to be pulling that into the table.

The knife is silver.

Boy, it'd be easier to make it black, but I'm still hungry.

Forget it.

The knife is silver.

Where is it light?

Where is it dark?

Where am I hungry?

Okay, now this is still wet, can't get into here yet.

Got to deal with some very light color changes and move on.

I want some of this very light color changes in here.

Just very light and then a few pieces of yellow crumb.

Come back in here and get some yellow crumbs because they're right in here.

Okay.

You'll be okay.

I think, come back in there.

You know and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter.

How's that, coffee in that cup and I can make the cup any color I want.

The cup does not have to be any color it is, neither does anything else.

So I want you to see this.

Can't do that yet cause it'll run.

The table, what color is the table?

What color is the cup?

You have a lot of choices here and you're still hungry.

How about, just for the fun of it, the cerulean blue lights coming from above it actually.

There's my cup and the light's coming from above.

So the rim has to be light and the bottom could be a little bit darker.

So make it a little bit darker, but okay.

That's love that color.

That was nice.

The inside of the cup, same color.

Watch out for that brown, let's try to stay a little tiny bit away from, I can get away with this without any extra time because I'm still hungry.

Okay, the plate is white.

The table, I want to see that, the table is going to be, how about rose, the little rosy color.

Will this work, I don't know.

Okay, I'll come over here and pull this line out.

There's your plate showing up.

Now, get the same kind of color over here.

Okay, and it would be in here and it would be in here.

Now making this show up, make a little bit of a background.

Doesn't matter what it is because I want to pull that back line away.

So here we go.

Pull the back line away And just feather it out.

Cause I'm in a hurry and I still want to eat.

You get the message?

Still want to eat.

Yep, and see what that did for a background?

It's just, it's nebulous.

It's sort of non-existent.

One of my favorites is John Singer Sargent, the way he fills in places is what I like to call the Sargent squiggle, just a minute and you're going to see it because, well there's one right there.

He doesn't bother to paint it.

Just stick it in.

It's there.

And it means that something is there and it doesn't matter what it is.

I'm still dealing with this, got to get a dark on that fork.

Come back and look at the fork.

Get a dark and get ready to eat, get ready to eat cause in a minute, in a minute I got it, in a minute I'm going to have it.

It could be mine.

(laughs) And here you go on this.

Here's your fork.

Do I care about the fork?

Not that much.

I really care about the cake, the fork has some shine on it.

I don't want to get too careful on that.

And is the cake under the fork?

Okay, come back in now and make sure the cake is going to work.

Oh, you hope, but you know, it doesn't matter.

That was the fun of doing it.

Few little crumbs down here.

Some yellow down in there.

That's that bright red.

And they want to be sure you have some pieces in here.

Am I getting to work and eat this or not?

Is there any shading on this plate?

Not really.

I'm okay.

It may not be the greatest thing on earth but really I got on there, about there.

So the little bit of time left, not much.

I can now eat the cake, which is the whole purpose of this if the food's there and you're hungry you are going to hurry.

You're going to find out how fast you can work.

And some of these turn out wonderfully and they're wonderful art for kitchens.

They're just great on the wall in kitchens.

I was working up in Sedona, Arizona and staying in a fabulous historic cabin, right on Oak Creek.

And docents from the art center had, let me stay there.

And I wanted to do a lovely sketch for them.

First I did one for me.

So I went out on this stream and I got a really nice sketch.

Here it is.

And I was really pleased with this.

I was so pleased with this sketch that I ran into that, marked my footprints ran into the cabin, grabbed a glass of Sauvignon Blanc wine, drunk it down really fast, cause I needed to get right back out there before the light changed, ran right back out, stood in exactly the same place and did a sketch for the wonderful people who let me use the cabin.

Now let me show you this sketch and it should give you a lesson.

I have two sets of these, by the way, within 20 minutes one glass of wine will destroy your eye hand coordination.

And for the rest of that evening, I didn't get any better.

I tried several times.

Yeah, there's a rabbit in it.

It's an abstract but this is what I was trying to get and could not do it.

Just one glass of wine.

That's pretty amazing.

And then the second test you're going to get to see this one too because it's, it really, really, really is important.

I'm not a bit against drinking wine, not a bit but pick when you're going to do it.

This was in a restaurant in Heber, Utah after teaching all day, it's a great steak place.

We were on the patio.

It was gorgeous, across the meadow there were some buildings and some mountains and there was a big willow tree.

And the minute we got there, because I was tired I had a glass of wine and started to sketch it.

It didn't get any better than this.

And then dinner came and that was the end of that.

Well, this last year we were back also in Park City again.

And we happened to go to that same restaurant in Heber.

And we happened to sit on the patio and we happened to order the same dinner because it's really good.

And I'm sitting there with a glass of red wine to go with my dinner and I'm thinking I couldn't do this last year.

What would happen if I sketch it first before I touch that glass of wine?

Well, you ready for this?

That's what was really out there.

That was what was really out there.

And after one glass of wine I'm still hungry by the way, look at the difference.

No eye-hand coordination.

Same person did both pairs.

All, remember I said, there were buildings out there.

I could not get them.

Could not get them.

Tried really hard.

Then, this is the second one.

So if you're going to be serious at all about what you do I recommend that you don't try to do it after you've had something to drink or perhaps maybe you could do it after you're upset.

I don't know.

But something to drink is going to wreck your eye hand coordination so much so that I met a competitive shooter.

And he said before competition, a full month before, they don't have a sip of coffee, tea, wine, beer any form of alcohol.

Because if you've had a beer during that month and the guy next to you hasn't, the guy next to you is going to beat you.

So in competition, if a month of having nothing to really, really clean out, well, it I can say that wine and food are fun together but don't try to paint it afterwards, just by the next day, you're pretty good.

And it's all a matter of decision.

Now let's go back to the one we just did a few minutes ago.

I'm a few minutes away that cake is looking really, really good.

This isn't that bad.

You know?

I'll bet.

I think if I'm lucky.

Yeah, I'm lucky.

I brought a mat with me.

Let me tell you we've haven't done this before.

Make sure I make enough room for this, make enough room for it.

Here we go.

If you put a mat on something you make it appear to be a whole lot better.

Well maybe you make it appear to be just as good as it is.

I bet that's really the case.

Isn't that nice?

And it does look like food.

It looks totally enough like food that I could hang it in the kitchen or give it to a friend and there's even room on it to write where it was done if I chose to do that or to even put decoration on it.

These are just so much fun to do.

And they're fast.

Then you just move on and do something else.

I'm not sure I'd do anything else to this.

If I wanted to, just for the fun of it, what would happen if remember I made that side a little bit darker and this is just playing with the light source.

What would happen if that's a purple?

I might match it with a purple come in over here and darken this.

I bet it strengthens it.

Always look for your shadows including when you're doing food, strengthens it.

There's the shadow from the cup, shadow over here.

See how much more exciting it is.

Darken the shadow on this side of the cup.

Here you go.

Now, one of the things that just happen and you might not notice this the focal point shifted to right there that is your lightest light and nearly the darkest dark.

I'm going to emphasize it so you see it because focal point's very, very, very important.

So what happens if I come back in here and darken this on purpose to make you look here you're going to look there.

You can direct your viewers vision anywhere you want by playing light and dark next to each other, playing complimentary colors next to each other.

That's a purple.

It's a secondary.

This is a primary.

It's yellow.

What would happen if, I mean, I'm playing with color now what would happen if I put that shadow down in these crumbs, would it strengthen it?

And in fact, having put you over there, can I get you back over here?

Can I make you look back here?

And this is an exercise when you have a little time, try it.

It's fun.

I want to get a real good dark.

The pen would do it, but I'm going to do it with watercolor.

I'm going to go for a strong dark on the fork strong dark to make you come back over here.

Now we're getting to where we have two focal points.

That's never good.

What next?

I mean, that's, that's standing out now.

If you don't want it to stand out that much blur it.

Everything is in your power.

See how much that changed it?

Blur it.

So everything's in your power.

Have fun.

Use food.

Do all of these things come along and do pocket sketching.

Look at the variety we've had in a short time and I'm still hungry.

And I'm still going to get to that piece of cake.

And thank you ever so much for being here.

Happy sketching.

Want to learn more about the wonderful world of pocket sketching?

Then visit my website at pocketsketching.com We have so much there for you to explore including free tips and training videos, the pocket sketching supplies, photo galleries, and how to access additional training.

All this and more is available at pocketsketching.com.

Learn enough to play for a lifetime.

(upbeat music)