Nic Steenhout on learning urban sketching

Nic
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is the work between. Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people, the people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back 1000s of years. I name this territory because it belongs with what this show is about: the ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I, and this show stand for.

Nic
This episode of the Work Between is going to be a little different. Usually, this podcast is a conversation, an interview. I sit down with someone and we talk about creativity, identity, disability, and the places where those things intersect. Today, it's just me.

Nic
Every creative practice develops its own tradition, ways of working that get passed along because they've helped a lot of people learn and become better at what they do. But traditions can also carry assumptions about how we learn, about the environment we work in, about what our bodies and brains can do or can't do. I've been thinking about what happens when those assumptions meet disability, and about the difference between changing what we're trying to learn and changing how we get there. Urban sketching happens to be where I've been encountering those questions lately, so that's where I'm going to start.

Nic
I've been thinking about urban sketching. I mean, I think about that a lot, so I should specify. Lately, I've been thinking about how we teach people to do urban sketching, because if you spend any time watching urban sketching videos or taking classes, you start hearing the same advice: sketch from life, draw directly in ink. Don't use photo. Don't start with pencil. There's good reasoning behind most of that. Sketching on location teaches you to observe what's actually in front of you. Drawing directly in ink can help you commit to the lines you've made. Working quickly can help loosen some of that perfectionism that can make drawing more difficult. So I understand the advice. A lot of it is great advice. Where I have a problem is when good advice becomes a prescription for how everybody is supposed to learn.

Nic
I'm disabled, and I'm very conscious of how much some of this advice assumes about the person holding the sketchbook. Urban sketching can make demands on your body before you've even started drawing. I often have to use wheelchair if I see a building I want to draw. I can't necessarily wander around until I find exactly the composition I want, and then settle wherever happens to give me the best view. Maybe there's a curb, maybe the ground is rough, or there's a slope. Maybe the place with the really good view is somewhere I can't put my chair without blocking the sidewalk. Sometimes I have to use a cane instead of wheelchair, and when I use a cane, I have a completely different experience. I may be able to get to the spot, but standing there for an hour might hurt, or maybe I can do it, but it uses so much energy that I don't have anything left afterward. And then, of course, there's the weather. Heat and cold aren't always just a question of being uncomfortable. For some disabled people, temperature can aggravate symptoms or affect the health. Staying another half hour because the drawing isn't quite finished may not be a reasonable choice. Once you've found somewhere to draw, there's everything has to deal with. Pain and fatigue take attention, so does filtering sound and movement and everything else happening around you. Some of us arrive at the drawing with more of our energy and attention already spoken for.

Nic
Think about what your brain is actually doing when you're sitting on a busy street trying to draw. You're looking at a roof line, and you're trying to understand where it's going. Somebody walks in front of you. There's a conversation happening behind you. A truck goes past. There's movement at the edge of your vision. Someone stops, and asks what you're drawing. Okay, where was that roof line again?

Nic
Some brains are very good at deciding that most of that information does not matter and pushing it into the background. Others not so much. For neurodivergent people, that conversation behind them may not become background noise just because they want it to. Movement at the edge of the vision may keep demanding attention. Filtering all of that can take effort, and that leaves less attention available for figuring out the drawing. For me, something different happens. If I'm sitting somewhere in public with a sketchbook, I'm very aware of the fact that I'm drawing in public, I'm trying to figure out a roof line. Someone walks toward me. I can't help wondering: Are they going to stop? Are they going to look? Can they see the page? And suddenly, I'm aware of the drawing in a completely different way. I'm aware of my hand. I'm aware that the line isn't right. I'm aware that somebody might see that it isn't right. Maybe they don't care. They probably don't care. That doesn't really change what happens in my head, though. I'm trying to learn something while feeling as though I'm supposed to demonstrate that I already know how to do it.

Nic
And this is where photographs become really useful for me. I'm still learning perspective, and an experienced sketcher may look at a building and understand that those lines are doing almost without thinking about it, I don't always see it yet. Give me a photograph, though, and I can stare at one roof line for as long as I need it to. I can follow it. I can look away. I can come back to it. I can compare it with another line. I can get it wrong and try again. A bus isn't going to pull up and block the bit I'm studying. The light isn't changing while I'm trying to understand why something looks the way it does. At home, I can be a learner. I can spend 20 minutes getting one roof line wrong. Maybe I start again and get it wrong a second time. Maybe I make a complete mess of the page. I can put the sketchbook down. I can go grab a drink. I can come back later, or come back tomorrow. Nobody is watching me learn. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but that's important to me. On location, I don't always give myself the same permission. I become conscious of doing this in public. Someone can look over my shoulder, someone can ask what I'm drawing, and I start feeling as though I should be producing something worth looking at. When what I'm actually trying to do is figure out why those two lines don't look the way I expected them to? For somebody else, that feeling may not bother them at all. Maybe it's the traffic they can't filter. Maybe it's the conversation behind them. Maybe it's everything moving at once. There's plenty of ways for a busy street to ask too much of a brain. Eventually, I want to sit in front of the actual building and recognize those relationships there. That's one of the things I want from urban sketching.

Nic
But I can learn some of this before I ask myself to do everything at once. Pencils-they can work the same way. If what I'm concentrating on today is proportion, maybe I work it out in pencil. Once I'm more comfortable with that, once I'm more comfortable with what I'm seeing, I can work in making those decisions directly in ink.

Nic
A photograph might be scaffolding for me. Pencils might be scaffolding. I can use them while I'm learning something, and maybe, eventually, I don't need them anymore. Some of the other things I've been talking about, those are different. I may get to a point where I no longer need a photograph to understand a roofline, but I'm not going to practice my way out of being a wheelchair user. I'm still going to need somewhere I can actually put my chair. Someone who can't comfortably stand for an hour isn't going to become a better artist and suddenly stop needing to sit down. A neurodivergent sketcher may always concentrate better with earbuds, and someone whose disability is affected by heat isn't going to become more skilled, or skilled enough that a hot afternoon stops affecting them. That's the difference between scaffolding and accommodation. One may help me while I'm learning; the other may simply be part of how I sketch because I have no choice.

Nic
Think about stairs. What do I actually need to do? I need to get from one floor to another. For a lot of people, stairs, those work perfectly well. For me, they don't. I don't need the second floor lowered because I use a wheelchair. I need another way of getting there. If I'm learning perspective, then yes, I need to understand perspective. Whether I can filter the conversation at the next table while I'm learning, that's a different question. Whether I feel like I'm performing because somebody can see my sketchbook doesn't tell you whether I understand perspective either. And being able to stand on a street corner for an hour doesn't make someone better at seeing what's in front of them. Somehow though, these things can get bundled together because they're part of the traditional image we have of urban sketching.

Nic
Which brings me back to the Urban Sketcher manifesto. I like that manifesto. Drawing on location is at the heart of urban sketching, and that's one of the things that attract me to it. Being there changes the drawing. People move, vehicles get in the way, the weather changes. You notice something you might never have thought to photograph. You have to make choices about what goes into your drawing, you have to make those changes because you can't possibly put everything that's happening on the one page. I do want to get better at all of that, but the manifesto doesn't tell me how I'm allowed to practice perspective before I get there, and it doesn't tell me what my body has to be capable of once I arrive. Somewhere along the way, draw on location has picked up some extra expectations. Don't practice from photographs. Don't use pencils. Find your view, sit down, pull out your pen, and draw while the city moves around you. That's obviously a perfectly good way to urban sketch. It's just not available to everybody. I wish we understood that better. A beginner sitting at their kitchen table, trying to understand the perspective of a roof from a photograph, may be preparing for the day when they draw that building from life. At home, they have somewhere they can be a learner first. Once we're outside, we're going to do this differently too. I might choose a less dramatic view because that's where there's room for my chair. Someone else might put in earbuds. 20 minutes may be enough for somebody else, and when I take my sketchbook outside, the things that make a place accessible to me don't suddenly stop mattering because I've learned to draw better. I still need somewhere I can physically be. Someone else still may need to control the noise around them, or the movement, or leave before everybody else does. Sometimes I need the street to hold still for a while, so I can understand what I'm looking at. When I'm ready for it to start moving again, I still need a place on that street from which I can draw.

Nic
If you enjoyed this episode, if you were inspired in any way, or if you learned something, please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or whatever podcast aggregator you use. Ratings and reviews really do help. Thank you. And that's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is the work between. If this sounds like the kind of conversation you like. Subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.