In this episode, I speak with Shari Blaukopf, an educator and urban-sketcher in Montreal. Below is a summarized transcript of our conversation.

To see Shari’s work, visit her website.

Shari offers excellent online courses (which we discuss in our conversation). To find her latest work as it happens, follow her on IG here.

Shari is a prolific blogger and goes into the details - challenges, inspirations, ideas - that go into her work. I highly recommend reading her blog to better know her style, and take inspiration!

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the SneakyArt Podcast. I’m your host, Nishant Jain.

Today I’m speaking with Shari Blaukopf, an artist, urban sketcher and art-educator from Montreal. Shari’s work is fascinating because it has a quality many artists would envy - whether you see it from up close or at a distance, you will instantly like it.

Whether you are an artist yourself, or just someone scrolling down their social media feed, her watercolors work for you at multiple levels. With light and color and shadows, Shari is able to paint her world in a way that is instantly recognizable, relatable and lovable.

In today’s conversation, I try to understand the habits and regular practices that have made Shari into the artist she is today. I learn from her that what and how we paint depends on what and how we see, and it is equally important to work on the seeing part as the painting part. In different ways, through blogging and her experience as an art-educator, Shari has put herself through the grind of expressing and communicating her art to an audience. This compels her to develop both an insider and an outsider’s perspective on her own work. How does she use this to improve and to inspire herself? This is an episode packed with a lot of great, practical advice, and I hope you will enjoy it.

06:20 Shari talks about how her education in graphic design helped her understand composition and page layout.

10:50 Shari on the value of blogging to help elucidate thoughts, and how it fit into her regular rhythm of drawing something… Answering the questions - “What do I want to write about today? What are the decisions I am making as I look at this scene?”

16:50 Shari, on the question of how USk entered her life … Her need for “a time efficient way to bring drawing back into my life” … and finding the USk blog

20:00 Shari, on the value of the tactile experience in traditional art as opposed to digital art forms … Nishant shares his experiences of learning with both traditional and digital media, “how one informs the other”

24:02 Shari speaks about the fundamental differences in watercolor vs line-work approach when facing a blank page … “Shapes, not lines” … Insight from USk community.

29:10 Shari explains a good hack to imbibe the basics of color theory… triad symphonies … monochrome work … dominant colors … lots of useful advice here.

35:00 Shari on drawing from observation versus reference images… “There is a lot of learning in seeing” … Interesting ways to make a reference pic exciting and challenging … Nishant on the value of studying still frames from popular movies

42:00 Shari on designing her online courses … the ratio of success to failure, and how to enjoy failures … being critical of your own work … giving a second chance to sketches after some time

46:05 Shari on the courage it takes to post your work online for the scrutiny of strangers. Nishant talks about how USk community has no entry barriers, making it easy to be one of the group… They speak about experiences from USk seminars and learning from one another.

52:10 Shari talks about her efforts to reach students during the time of COVID, with online workshops, redesigned website … course design and video productions … collecting feedback

59:00 Shari’s big reason for any non-artist to try urban sketching, “Meditative quality, being in another zone … but mindful of your surroundings … being cognizant of where you are instead of just passing through.”

SneakyArt Podcast Ep3 - Seeing in Color with Shari B

TRANSCRIPT

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