Sketching to Teach Sketching

Whenever I work on my sketching classes and workshops I end up sketching. It's a very handy thing my brain does. Doing it helps me think about it, which helps me figure out how to talk about it. Here is a coffee cup and the view out of the Starbucks with just a few simple materials - a black fine-liner, gray brush pen, and two colored pencils. 

In the workshop I did a demo using three materials - a black fine-liner, a gray brush pen, and a colored pencil. It was easy to make a whole scene and the differentiate the background with one color.

During the second half of the workshop we worked with watercolor and with drawing a more elaborate scene. This is a silly exercise I have them do where they draw around something they have already drawn. It's inspired by a workshop I took with Mike Daikubara, but we had the whole Chicago skyline as inspiration! My students find this exercise frustrating, but I think that means it's working! But next time I might adjust it so that we start with one item in a corner or along the bottom, and work a more complex scene around it - like I did with the top sketch.
I learn so much from teaching!