The Plaza Mayor, Madrid, Spain.

Felipe III Statue, Plaza Mayor, Madrid.

Speed sketching practice.

Find your reason to sketch; mine, i love to sketch during my travels to record my observation, an attachment that reminds me of the experience visiting each places. Travel urban sketching demands a skill to sketch within a short time frame especially when we are travelling with other people who don't sketch. If each of your sketch needs a usual 1-2 hours to be completed, you might missed out a lot of important things you should have recorded in your sketchbook. But to do a speed sketching needs some smart planning, in order to make it possible and easier to be executed. These are some of the tips i did from my SPAIN trip;

• Use off-white paper. Using brown or grey tone of paper lets you to make the drawing looks complete faster. Drawing on a white paper will demand some sort of 'hero' element from your sketch to make it pop up and attractive. With the earthy background tone, some simple strokes is all it needs to look 'complete' and classy.

Quick 5 min sketches of Al-Hambra, Granada.

• Bold strong lines. Dont use small nip pens when you're sketching outside. This is because those pen nips below than 0.5 will take forever to finish unlike using the big bold strokes, to complete within 10 to 20 minutes. Like myself, I usually with 0.6 artline or broader nip such the brush pens.

A street in Madrid.

• Highlight and shadow. Using white and grey markers can easily make a sketch pop up. It gives some values of depth into the drawings.

Series of sketches in Malaga.

• Capture the essence. Instead of drawing everything, choose your subject wisely. Highlight some key subjects of a place to resembles their characters.

The great Cordoba Mosque-Church.

• Less is more. A good composition and clever use of blank spaces helps to improve the quality of the drawings and save so much time.

Cordoba Great Mosque And Cathedral minaret/bell tower.

Spending some time to sketch, to make the travel worth your while there.

Sometimes if you have some spare time to kill, you can plan and choose those significant selected places you want to spend more time to sketch. My tips is to get those other people travelling with you to sketch together! :D

A sketch by my family members when we were in Spain and stop for a coffee and sketch.
Clockwise from top left: My dad's @abgmie , my brother's @harythilmy, my uncle Afiq Shukor's and my own.

Luckily my family have already get used to my request to make a stop for a quick sketch and all of us also enjoy sketching sometimes....

...except for my Mom...hehehe...

but we compensate the time with giving her more time to shop while im getting some quick sketches outside the shops...it was all worth it!

Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, the home of Real Madrid!

The aftermath of the longer sketch session...:D