Vietnam – Street Scenes and Landscapes

Guest Post by Peter Andrews, Terrigal, Australia

Vietnam is a place of contrasts between the energy and chaos of the cities and the serenity of the charming rural landscapes, coastline and World Heritage Sites. I have tried to capture this contrast in the sketches I made during a recent visit with my partner over 2014/2015 Christmas New Year Period. I hope you enjoy them.

Street Scenes

Life is lived on the streets. Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City are noisy, bustling with activity and strange smells.

Hanoi still retains some of its fine colonial French architecture but
this tends to be subsumed in the mass of wiring, signs, makeshift
shades and awnings, add-on structures, aerials, merchandise, temporary
kitchens scattered amongst an endless sea of parked motorbikes and
push-bikes.  

Ho Chi Min City is home to around 12 million people and it seems they all own a motorbike.

Ho Chi Min City – The Ben Thanh Market is an amazing place to spend a few hours.

Landscapes, Coastlines and World Heritage Sites

The
day trip to Ha Long was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but it
turned out to be a fantastic day. I was working between an A5 and A6
Moleskine. Because the boat was moving, the view was constantly changing.
I had to work very fast to get the scenes onto paper. Lunch gave me an
opportunity to add some wash. 

Ha My Beach is home to a number of small fishing villages.

Ha My Beach Restaurant

Ha My Beach – the round, shell-like boats are made from waterproofed
canvas stretched over a frame, and simply left on the beach. This
sketch was an exception to my normal technique.

This is drawn on a
20x40cm 300gsm watercolour paper. It is much larger than I would normally
use – reflected in the finer line work and detail. It took a little
longer because I was working at a bigger scale.

My Son Sanctuary 

Hue – Imperial Palace

 Hoi An, Lunar Festival

Technique

I like to work fast, try not to over think what I am doing and let the sketch emerge. I usually draw standing up. I don’t use set-up lines, and leave the pen on the paper most of the time – not continuous line drawing but tending towards it. Increasingly I am sketching over two pages – I like the exaggerated horizontal format without the need to carry a large sketchpad. The join in the centre of the two pages influences the composition; I don’t want it to occur on a complex part of the scene – sometimes I use it to divide the composition into two parts.

I enjoy the immediacy of black and white and it allows me to carry the minimum amount of material and equipment. Usually I fit everything in my pocket (no backpack to weigh me down).

Landscape format A5 or A6 size watercolour Moleskine that will fit in my pocket.

Felt pen or rollerball pen (sometimes I just carry the refill because it is smaller and you don’t really need the rest of the pen). I have tested different pens and refills because I like to use water-soluble ink. Although the pens I use are black, when the line work is washed it will change colour, sometimes sepia, sometimes blue and sometimes a purple tinge, depending on the paper type or pen I am
using. When I don’t want the line work to dissolve, I use a colourfast non-soluble ink pen like Rotring Tikky or Micron.

I have started to carry a water brush pen – in the past I would simply apply a wash with my finger and whatever medium I could find – water, coffee, coke or wine – coffee and red wine add an interesting colour to the wash.

Much of the work is deliberately small so that when it is enlarged it becomes grainy and starts to fracture. It becomes more like graffiti, particularly when it is blown up on a large format plotter to A2 or A1 size.

Peter Andrews is an Architect and Urban Designer from Terrigal, Australia. You can see more images of Peter’s Vietnam trip and other works on his Flickr site Panda1Grafix.