Gouache and go: Faster Urban Sketching with Murray Dewhurst

International Urban Sketching Week 2025

#UskWeek2025 #urbansketchers

Top 3 Sketching Tips from Murray Dewhurst

1. Start with Shadows
   Begin your sketch by painting in the shadows with diluted neutral gouache. This builds strong value structure and depth from the start—no need to pencil things in first.
2. Hold Your Sketchbook at Eye Level
   Sketching with your book held beside the scene (not on your lap) makes it easier to judge shapes and values accurately, improving proportions and perspective.
3. Trust the Process—no pencil required
   Resist the urge to reach for your pen. Let values and colour do the defining work. It’s faster, more expressive, and often leads to surprisingly complete sketches.

Sketching with Murray Dewhurst: Shadows, Gouache, and the Joy of Process

We kicked off International Urban Sketchers Week (1–7 May) with something special—an afternoon with Murray Dewhurst, a founding member of Urban Sketchers Auckland and a truly inspiring artist. Nearly 20 of us gathered in Stable Lane, Eden Terrace, drawn by Murray’s relaxed “Values Workshop” and the chance to sketch alongside him.

Eden Terrace is a sketcher’s dream and Stable Lane in particular is a favourite of Murray’s, especially for the backs of old shops and repurposed stables—perfect for exploring shape, light, and depth.

Murray has developed a brilliant, efficient technique over time, especially helpful for those of us juggling kids, jobs and finding time to  mow lawns! Instead of starting with pencil or pen, he picks up a water brush with diluted gouache from his palette and begins with shadows. Just shadows. He showed us how forgiving gouache can be: rubbing marks with his fingers, scrubbing them with a brush of water to remove marks, paining over previous strokes to obliterate them.

Layering a neutral tint, he builds depth by darking the intensity of the value of his trokes before even touching colour. He noticed, in fact, that just using this technique you can end up with a wonderful painting and just call it a day. But once that foundation of neutral layers of values is in place, colour can be added—especially Murray’s signature vivid sky blue, applied with his dedicated ‘blue’ water brush only used for blue to avoid muddy mixes (I assume, I didn’t actually ask him).

Murray holds his sketchbook up at eye level, right beside the scene he is drawing. He says it makes comparing shapes and values easier. “It’s almost like tracing the scene,” he said. It’s a subtle change, but it really helped me see differently and it really did help.

I’ll admit, it was hard to stick with the process—my pen hand was itching! But I stayed with the brush, layering tone after tone, then some colour. When I got home, I finally saw what Murray had been telling me: I had created depth, without needing any ink lines at all.

We worked on some kind of tinted paper—Murray had a brown craft-paper sketchbook, others used grey paper, and I brought along a cracker box and used the cardboard inside which was a light browny-grey colour. It was a very forgiving surface and it worked a treat! As a bonus many of us ended up with leaf litter in our paint boxes too, thanks to the cool autumn breeze.

This was my first time using gouache, and I loved how it reactivates like watercolour (make sure you get the non-acrylic kind). I used my round waterbrush a lot, and after borrowing Murray’s square-tipped blue-only brush, I definitely want one of those. It felt like carving sky into the scene and I really admired my brushwok.

Best of all, I finished a sketch on location—finished! That almost never happens for me. This method is faster, loosened me up a lot, and created far more energy in line and colour than I normally see in my work. I’ll be squeezing some gouache into a spare palette and taking this approach out again soon.

Key takeaway for me is to trust the process when trying new things. You might just surprise yourself!

Michelle Park is a member of Urban Sketchers Auckland. This post reflects her personal experiences from Murray Dewhurst’s Values Workshop as part of the Urban Sketchers International Week hosted by Urban Sketchers Auckland in April 2025