Tips for Creating Depth and Distance

Plus, new workshops, local classes and sketching sessions

One of the big challenges when sketching from life is translating a three-dimensional world to the flat surface of paper and creating the illusion of depth. There are many ways to do this. Here are a few:

• Look for angles and poses that communicate depth and distance. You could get dramatic with foreshortening (like a wide-angle lens photo), but even keeping it subtler and simpler, like the foreshortened foot in the sketch below, works.

The idea applies even to a simple subject with a shallower depth of field, like this one, where the lemon in the front seems to come towards you.

• Think like a Stage Designer. Think in layers, like you would when designing a simple set for a school play. This sketch has a straightforward setup, with two layers juxtaposed against each other: a foreground layer of wildflowers and a background layer featuring the house. You get the idea of distance because the flowers tower over the house, indicating that they are close to you.

This next sketch of a tiny shop in India is built in practically one flat plane, with the foreground character giving it some depth.

• Create Continuous Space
Slightly more complex than the stage-set idea is the cueing of continuous depth of space. In the sketch below, the buildings on Stanford’s campus are rendered in quite a shallow space as a backdrop to the people in the courtyard who are scattered from the foreground, through mid-distance, and to the background so that they indicate the distance you need to traverse before we get to the buildings.

• Overlap
With every one of the examples here, notice the overlapping objects, with stuff in the foreground partially obscuring what is behind it, cueing depth and distance.

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WORKSHOPS

Colors of Santa Fe, 2026

The Colors of Santa Fe workshop is a mixed media workshop that blends studio time with on-location sketching, exploring color, composition, urban sketching, landscape painting, and visual storytelling using watercolor, gouache, colored pencils, crayons, and more. Inspired by O’Keeffe’s art and led by Maru Godas and me.
Sign Up Now!

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Sketching PlayLab Retreat with Paul Wang and Suhita

This is a one-time opportunity: Join Paul Wang and me at a picturesque countryside estate in Occitanie, France in May 2026. This is an all-levels workshop with an emphasis on exploration and personal style. Click here to read about it and sign up.

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LOCAL WORKSHOP AND LIFE DRAWING

In San Jose:

Beginning Watercolors: Sketching Sunflowers

Cosentino Family Farm, San Jose. 2-hour class on July 19, 2025.

This is a beginner-level workshop: Learn the basics of watercolor and color-mixing and take home a watercolor sketch inspired by the sunflowers in bloom right now. Workshop fee includes supplies.
Details and signup here.

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Life Drawing at MACLA, San Jose

Monthly life drawing session (NOT a workshop)

If you are local to the South Bay, MACLA runs a monthly life drawing session. Here is the link to the July session.

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Last month, the Sketching Together group (the paid tier of this substack) sketched people at the beach. Here are some of the lovely pieces made by participants in that session.

This month, we will sketch using photos I took last week in farmers’ markets in Paris. Join us by subscribing below!