Events

Sketching/Drawing workshop with Peter Hutchinson

We are pleased to welcome Peter Hutchinson, Chartered Landscape Architect, Chartered Designer, illustrator, product designer and artist to the RSUA for a sketching/drawing workshop on Saturday 28 September 2024.

The workshop is open to people of all ages, skills and abilities, no prior knowledge of drawing is necessary.

Peter’s love of drawing spans many decades. When computers replaced drawing boards in professional offices the importance of drawing waned with many practitioners. Peter would like to reengage you all again with this wonderful art form to show how it’s still an important tool in the architects ’toolbox’ and just as valuable today in this increasingly digital age.

Areas of Learning

• Brief introduction to the medium- Materials & ‘implements’
• Some basic principles and techniques-horizon, perspective, elevation, scale proportion
• Importance of drawing implement being an extension of your arm/hand
• The art of looking and seeing-observation, selection and decision making
• Picking a subject [building/streetscape] to draw and ways of framing it
• Deciding on the size of the sketch to the page and what detail to include/or not
• It is not all about accuracy-what is it you are trying to convey to the viewer
• How to select a position to draw and the value of being comfortable  
• The value of cross hatching -as well as adding texture and pattern
• How to be comfortable with ‘mistakes’ and incorporate them as an asset
• Dealing with light and shade and creating atmosphere and ‘ambience’
• Knowing when a sketch[drawing] is complete/knowing when to stop
• Ways to finish afterwards when stopped unexpectedly [eg rain/light/time]
• Practice is important as drawing skills improve with the effort/time put in

Materials         

Those of you familiar with Peter’s work (especially articles on projects and Travelogues in Perspective) may have noticed the extensive use of freehand drawing-from initial concept to plans/elevations and details.

Peter’s preference for drawing are always a:

• fine Rollerball pen [0.4 Pentel G-TEC-C4] 
• A6 hardback book [Daler & Rowney  Artists Sketch book-soft touch/ivory]

Your selection may be different, whatever you are comfortable with, but please bring with you your preferred materials to draw with.

Please note – The order of events on the day may vary according to participants attending/weather conditions etc, it is hoped the group will be able to go outside to sketch streetscapes, so make sure you bring appropriate clothing!

Speaker Bio

Peter Hutchinson is a Chartered Landscape Architect, Chartered Designer, illustrator, product designer and artist. He has run his own successful award winning design practice for 40 years. He has taught at Queens University in the School of Architecture as a part time lecturer before becoming a Teaching Fellow, lecturing at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, he taught design in the studio and delivered a landscape design module lecture course. He also was a part time lecture in the University of Ulster Schools of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

He is well known not only for his landscape architectural designs and illustrations which have won many awards nationally and internationally and been published in the RSUA Perspective and Living Design and the Landscape Institute Journal as well as Contact Illustrators & Association of Illustrators annual publication etc … but also for his drawings which have been exhibited widely in Ireland and the UK.

He has also illustrated for the Sunday Times colour supplement and the BBC History magazine and undertaken numerous commissions to design for and in conjunction with architectural and design practices.