How to Choose What to Sketch (And What to Walk Away From)

Learn how to pick the right scene and avoid overwhelming subjects with practical urban sketching composition tips.

The Hardest Part of Urban Sketching Happens Before the Pen Hits the Page

You have walked to a spot you have been wanting to sketch for ages. Maybe it is a street you drive past every day, or a harbour you visited on holiday. You sit down, open your sketchbook, look up, and then it hits you. There is too much going on. Buildings everywhere. Cars. Signs. People. An umbrella that is ruining the whole composition but is apparently not going anywhere. And suddenly you are not sure if this is even a good scene to sketch.

Choosing what to sketch, and just as importantly what not to sketch, is one of those skills that experienced sketchers use constantly but rarely talk about. It is not glamorous. It is just a quiet decision you make before you start, and it has more influence over the quality of your finished sketch than almost anything else you do.

Not Every Beautiful Scene Makes a Good Sketch

This might sound counterintuitive, but some of the most visually stunning places are genuinely terrible subjects to sketch. And recognising that is not a failure of skill, it is good judgement.

When Ian was filming in Riomaggiore recently, he stood in front of one particular view by the marina that was, by any measure, a beautiful spot. Boats stacked on the slipway. Buildings rising up on both sides with extreme perspective. A restaurant terrace. People everywhere. Kayaks and canoes scattered around. The Mediterranean sparkling in the background. Stunning to look at. But he would not sketch it. And he was quite clear about why.

The problem was not that it was too difficult technically. The problem was structural. There was no clear focal point. The perspective was pulling in too many directions at once. The boats, the buildings, the people, the parasols, they were all competing for attention, and none of them were winning. As he put it, it was just a big cluster of stuff. And when a scene is a big cluster of stuff, your sketch will be too, no matter how skilled you are.

The thing to understand is that your eye can handle visual chaos in a way that a sketch on paper cannot. When you stand in front of a busy scene, your brain is filtering, prioritising, and editing in real time. You look at the boats, then the buildings, then the water, and it all feels coherent because your brain is doing the work. But a sketch has to do all of that work on a flat piece of paper with no ability to shift focus. If the scene does not have a clear structure, the sketch will not either.

What to Look for When Choosing a Scene

So what makes a scene worth sketching? It is not about finding something simple. Some of the best subjects are genuinely complex. It is about finding something that has structure underneath the complexity.

The first thing to look for is a clear compositional framework. Can you see a strong line that leads the eye into the picture? A pathway sweeping down. A roofline creating a diagonal. A street disappearing into a vanishing point. That line does not need to be dramatic, but it needs to exist. Without it, the viewer has nowhere to go and the sketch just sits there.

The second thing is natural framing. Are there elements that contain the scene and stop it from sprawling? A building on one side that acts as a wall. A rock formation. A tree. Framing devices give a sketch edges, and edges give the viewer permission to relax inside the picture. Without them, the eye drifts off the page and the composition feels unfinished.

The third thing, and this one is harder to articulate, is layering. Does the scene have depth? Is there something in the foreground, something in the middle ground, and something in the background? A sketch with layers tells a story. A sketch without layers is a flat record of what was there. You are looking for scenes where things overlap, where buildings peek behind other buildings, where a church spire rises above a roofline. That layering creates the illusion of space and gives the sketch its sense of place.

The Forty Metre Rule: When Walking Away Makes Everything Better

Here is something Ian did in Riomaggiore that is worth thinking about next time you are choosing a scene. He was standing on the main street, looking up at a row of buildings. Beautiful elevation. Wonderful shutters. Great sense of perspective. But in the foreground, there was an ugly outdoor seating area from a restaurant, a bench with someone sitting on it, and an umbrella that was doing nothing for the composition.

Instead of trying to work around those problems, which is what most of us would do, he just walked about forty metres up the street. And everything changed. The outdoor seating was behind him. The bench was gone. The same buildings were still there, but now the view was cleaner, the perspective was stronger, and a church spire had appeared in the background that was completely hidden from the previous spot. The scene went from cluttered and awkward to layered and compelling, just by moving.

This is not a special technique. There is no clever hack here. It is just the willingness to not commit to the first thing you see. Most of us find a spot, sit down, and start drawing because we feel like we should get on with it. But spending five minutes walking around, looking at the same subject from different angles and different distances, can completely transform what ends up on the page. The scene does not change. Your relationship to it does.

Knowing When a Scene Is Too Much

There is a difference between a scene that is complex and a scene that is overwhelming, and learning to tell them apart is one of the most useful things you can develop as a sketcher.

A complex scene has a lot going on, but it has structure. You can see the bones of the composition. You can identify where the focal point is, even if there are lots of details around it. A complex scene is challenging, but it is workable. You know where to start, even if the middle and the end feel uncertain.

An overwhelming scene has no bones. It is visual noise. Everything is competing and nothing is anchoring the picture. When you look at it and feel a kind of sinking feeling, that is not your lack of skill talking. That is your compositional instinct telling you something useful. Listen to it.

The practical test is simple. Can you describe the scene in one sentence? “A row of colourful buildings sweeping down to a harbour with a church spire behind” is a scene with structure. “Lots of buildings and boats and people and stuff” is a scene without it. If you cannot summarise it, you probably cannot sketch it in a way that will feel satisfying.

When you're confronted with a complex scene like this which is a real kind of jumble of shapes, you've got to let things go and not worry about drawing everything... What is the most important thing? Is it a pure replication of what I can see, or is it the picture I can draw and the story I can tell and the amount of fun I can have in doing it? So if you need to miss something out, you just miss something out

– Ian Fennelly

What About the Scenes You Walk Away From?

Walking away from a scene is not giving up. It is one of the most creative decisions you can make, because it means you are being intentional about what you choose to invest your time in. Every sketch takes time. Every sketch takes energy and concentration and emotional investment. Spending that on a subject that was never going to work is not practice, it is frustration dressed up as effort.

But not every scene you walk away from is a bad scene. Some are brilliant subjects where the circumstances just were not right. Not enough time. Too many people. The light was wrong. The angle was blocked by a van. These are the ones worth remembering, because they might be available next time. Take a quick photo. Make a note. Share what you spotted with sketching friends, or jot down composition observations in your sketchbook to discuss when you sketch together. Do a thirty-second pen placement sketch just to capture the basic structure. That way, the scene is not lost, and you have already sharpened your eye by assessing it alongside others who understand the challenges. It is just waiting.

Over time, you will build up a little collection of these. Scenes you spotted, assessed, and filed away for a better day. And when you go back to them, you will approach them differently, because the act of noticing and evaluating has already done half the work. You have already thought about the structure, the framing, the layering. Your sketchbook might be blank, but your brain has been sketching it ever since you walked away.

Final Thoughts

Choosing what to sketch is not a warm-up exercise before the real work begins. It is the real work. It is the skill that separates a satisfying sketching session from a frustrating one, and it is something that gets better the more you pay attention to it.

Next time you arrive at a spot and feel that familiar overwhelm, do not force it. Walk around. Look at the scene from different distances and angles. Ask yourself: can I see the structure? Is there a line that leads me in? Is there something framing the edges? Is there depth? If the answer is yes, sit down and start. If the answer is no, walk forty metres and ask again.

Once you have chosen the right scene, the three-colour palette system in Sketch Italy gives you a clear, simple path through painting it. Some of the best sketches start not with a mark on the page, but with the decision to move your feet. And some of the most important creative decisions you will ever make involve closing your sketchbook, walking away, and finding something better.
That is not giving up. That is seeing like a sketcher.

Ready to learn more?

Sketch Italy teaches this decision-making directly. Alongside the five main workshops, Ian filmed a short series called Changing The Scene, where he stands in front of two views side by side – one he wouldn’t sketch, and one he would – and talks you through exactly why. It is the kind of training that turns “I have no idea where to start” into “I know what to look for.” And once you have chosen the right scene, the three-colour palette system gives you a clear path through painting it.

About the Artist

Ian Fennelly focuses on capturing urban spaces and environments by drawing the places where people have been without actually including them.

His process involves layering watercolors, brush pens, and liners to build depth, texture, and detail, allowing them to fully immerse in the scene while adapting to changes in their surroundings.