#sketching

Sketchfully Yours,

LUIS E. APARICIO

ILLUSTRATOR–DESIGNER-CARICATURIST–CARTOONIST

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Re-visiting Sketching School

Luis E. Aparicio

Apr 22, 2011
1 min

Re-visiting Sketching School

Today I went with my wife to Old San Juan with our sketching materials. On the way there, my car broke down, but I managed to get to the parking lot at La Puntilla and left it there… hope it is still there tomorrow morning. We went to a very nice coffee-house called Cuatro Sombras in Calle Recinto Sur #259. The coffee was not the best I’ve had, but the experience was so good that I’m giving it another try some day soon… maybe the barista was new… There they have this stunn

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Could the iPad be the newest sketching tool?

Luis E. Aparicio

Apr 20, 2011
1 min

Could the iPad be the newest sketching tool?

I’m in love with the iPad2… I just downloaded an app called ASKetch after reading a review of it. This was my first sketch with it; the app is extremely simple and it just simply works. It feels like if you were using graphite. You control the darkness by pinching: a small circle draws very dark and vice versa. It isn’t pretentious, only a handful of tools, but it gave me a very good first impression. And for $0.99, it is a bargain. Maybe the iPad won’t replace my sketchbo

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Sketchcrawl 31: San Juan, PR

Luis E. Aparicio

Apr 17, 2011
1 min

Sketchcrawl 31: San Juan, PR

I only could sketch for a couple of hours, as I had a class, but my industrial design students joined me at the end of the class and participated as well. I always had wanted to sketch the courtyard of the building I teach at, which is the restored building of Hospital de la Concepción. The second sketch is a view of the gallery around the courtyard. The third sketch is the Castillo San Felipe del Morro, as seen from the main building of the School of Fine Arts of Puerto R

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A twist to virtual paintouts

Luis E. Aparicio

Apr 6, 2011
1 min

A twist to virtual paintouts

A good thing about virtual paintouts is that you can go “exploring” other countries without having to do it physically. However, sometimes I want to sketch interesting places or buildings and not necessarily streets, which is, well… Google’s Street View forte. But I remembered seeing the Colosseum in Rome as the opening screen, so maybe “Street View” is not limited to streets. So I searched online for traditional Japanese architecture. I remember when in architecture schoo

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Virtual Paintout- Japan

Luis E. Aparicio

Apr 3, 2011
1 min

Virtual Paintout- Japan

Here I used my son’s Faber Castell Manga Shojo set and my Copic markers; I am really enjoying sketching this fast and loose. *edit: LOL@ my Japanese calligraphy… I’m probably cursing there on that sign… #sketching #Japan #loose #virtualpaintout #architecture #markers #sketch #Copic #dibujo #drawing

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Lunchtime virtual sketch-out

Luis E. Aparicio

Mar 23, 2011
1 min

Lunchtime virtual sketch-out

I had an impromptu sketching session today at lunch; had almost 50 minutes free, so I went virtually to Cape Town once again, as part of The Virtual Paintout. After navigating for a while, I finally settled for the view. As I hadn’t planned, I could only use the few items I had at hand at the office: 32 lbs. Hammermill Laser Printer paper, felt-tip pens, a Sharpie and a four or five almost-dried-out Prismacolor markers. Really tempted into rendering with fluorescent highl

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Yesterday @ Guajataca, PR and today @ Cape Town, South Africa

Luis E. Aparicio

Mar 21, 2011
2 min

Yesterday @ Guajataca, PR and today @ Cape Town, South Africa

Yesterday I went on a family trip with my wife and son. We took with us some snacks, a cooler with ice, water, some cheese, yogurt and home-made ceviche for lunch. We drove to Guajataca, which is in between Quebradillas and Isabela, at the northwest part of the island. It was a beautiful and breezy day. We took turns driving, so both of us did our warm-up sketches on the freeway. After we had lunch we spent some time sketching. I managed to do just a few, as I wasn’t fe

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Ode to Hideous

Luis E. Aparicio

Mar 17, 2011
1 min

Ode to Hideous

Could somebody PLEASE incorporate Aesthetics 101 into Engineering Curricula? When an otherwise beautiful landscape is completely disregarded and desecrated with all sorts of “engineering marvels” we should really be offended. Today I sketched the view from my work’s parking space. Not even mature trees can cover up and hide the magnificent display of towers, power cables, antennas, chimneys, cranes and transformers. It is like if they throw all the items listed on their c

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Experimenting with Copics

Luis E. Aparicio

Mar 17, 2011
1 min

Experimenting with Copics

Last Saturday Prof. Leytham lent me his Sailor brush pen so I could try it. It is designed for Japanese calligraphy, which brush can produce beautiful lines of different widths. I fell in love with it and will be purchasing one promptly. Tonight I wanted to see if the brush tip of my Copic markers would work in a similar way. I decided to try them on one of my sketchbooks, a Hand-book with heavyweight sheets. These are supposed to take light watercolor washes, but as soon

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The Sketching School 2011, San Juan, PR

Luis E. Aparicio

Mar 14, 2011
2 min

The Sketching School 2011, San Juan, PR

This weekend I’ve was “kind of” invited to participate in a class called Sketching School. It is a class taught by Prof. Tom Leytham at Norwich University in Vermont, in which he travels with a group of architecture students for 9 intensive days devoted to sketching and watercolors. Prof. Manuel García Fonteboa told me that they were going to be in San Juan this week and he wanted me to meet Prof. Leytham, and that I may go ahead and sketch with them. To make a long story

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Going back to school! Well, not exactly, but close enough…

Luis E. Aparicio

Mar 6, 2011
2 min

Going back to school! Well, not exactly, but close enough…

This week I received a message from one my professors when I was studying architecture, Manuel García Fonteboa. Through the years Manuel has become a very good friend of mine and my family. He was taking his first year design studio class to sketch nature at the Jardín Botánico de Rio Piedras, and he was inviting us because we might like joining them. Of course we were! Also he invited another very good friend of ours and watercolorist, Rafael Félix. It’s funny that the

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Still sketching tight

Luis E. Aparicio

Feb 21, 2011
2 min

Still sketching tight

Friday night I went to a very interesting presentation, called Pecha Kucha. It is a style originated in Japan designed for oral presentations to be fast and concise… Designers like to talk too much, so the presentation format is that you show 20 slides and can only speak 20 seconds on each. They move with a fast pace, so it is dynamic and entertaining. I got hooked with it and will be exploring how to use this concept. Yesterday I got to make two sketches that I’m not tha

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Overcoming my fears

Luis E. Aparicio

Feb 9, 2011
1 min

Overcoming my fears

Well, today I did my first sketch of a non-blob car as an adult. I decided that it was time I overcome my fears and start practicing sketching them properly. I’m not doing neurosurgery, so I’m allowed to commit as many mistakes as I want. As a friend of mine says, it is just a small drawing. I used to own a Prius, and I loved it, and thus miss it very much. So I googled for a picture of a Prius; mine was silver, but I wanted to use more brilliant colors so went for one wi

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My first sketch at a beach

Luis E. Aparicio

Feb 7, 2011
1 min

My first sketch at a beach

I’d gone several times to the place since I met my wife 17 years ago, but today it was the first time I walked down the street to where the beach is. It is really close, like 200 ft away from the restaurant, but I never cared to find out what was at the end of the street. It was actually a nicer scene than I thought. So I took out one of my sketchbooks and the watercolors. I sketched it directly with the watercolors on a 8″x 5″ sketchbook in less than 10 minutes. I really

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Are markers obsolete? I don’t think so!

Luis E. Aparicio

Feb 3, 2011
2 min

Are markers obsolete? I don’t think so!

Back in school I did most of my renderings with colored pencil and airbrush. I only used markers very sparingly, they were expensive and didn’t seem as forgiving as I would’ve thought. I remember though seeing a lot of beautiful drawings rendered with markers, but I never put the effort to learn to use them extensively. Around a year ago I decided to get a set of markers and learn for good. Nowadays with the internet you can do a lot more research before purchasing a produ

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My son’s challenges

Luis E. Aparicio

Feb 2, 2011
3 min

My son’s challenges

Well, I found a name for my blog… I updated the header image to include a scan of the title, handwritten with a Sharpie. The symbol below is part of my signature, representing the first three letters of my last name, Aparicio. Virtually all my friends (my wife included) know me as Apa. In fact, when my wife calls me by me whole name I know she is really mad at me. Anyways, I liked the title and had to sign it. For the past four months I’ve tried to sketch something every

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Attendance… Optional? Thanks but no thanks…

Luis E. Aparicio

Feb 1, 2011
1 min

Attendance… Optional? Thanks but no thanks…

The other day I invited my whole class to go out and sketch at Old San Juan. It’s true that I told them attendance wasn’t required, but I didn’t expect no one would come. One of my students, who happens to be a very good friend since I was a student, was the only one who finally came. I still can’t believe it. If one of my professors invited me to go out and sketch I was the first one there! And so were my friends in college. More than 10 years after graduating we still

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¡Hola desde Puerto Rico!

Luis E. Aparicio

Jan 31, 2011
3 min

¡Hola desde Puerto Rico!

Hello everyone! My name is Luis E. Aparicio and I am from San Juan, Puerto Rico. I’m new to this community, and to this point I have been enjoying it very much. This blog will be about one of my passions, sketching. Please join me even if you’ve never picked up a pencil in 30 years. When you learn to relax while sketching you will find that it is a wonderful therapy. You will find that time flies by and you will appreciate your world much more. When I started studying a

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