Urban Sketch: Cafe at the Tavira Mall
Day Twenty-Three of my 365 Day Sketch Challenge
Continuing with day Twenty-Three of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. New week. New creative vigor! Time to venture outside and sketch some people live, and then head back to the studio for and hour of Drawing is Free speed sketching.
Urban Sketching People
I took a jaunt to the local Shopping Mall, a 5 Euro uber ride from home, and did a quick shaky sketch from the back seat of the car to get me warmed up.
Then I headed to the mall cafe outside Continente for some live sketching. The new layout of the cafe isn’t conducive for sketching. The tables are quite close together, and it’s not easy to get a good view of multiple tables.
So I swivelled around a lot today to get a wide spectrum of people at far away tables. Lots of coats, and bundled up against the cold weather.
For most of the sketches I just omitted the chairs, but for the last sketch I included them.
I used to feel I had to sketch everything I saw, but nowadays I edit a lot when I’m urban sketching people live.
For all of these sketches, I did the ink lines and the tonal shading live, and then finished the sketches off with a loose watercolour wash at home.
Drawing is Free Speed Sketching
I attended another Drawing is Free live sketching event tonight. It’s a one-hour speed sketching session, with each pose the length of a different music track. So each pose was between 3 to 5 minutes.
There was a packed house for this sketching event, and some good poses. There were some interesting large shapes for the hair today.
I used a Staedtler pigment liner 0.05. For some reason I decided to play around with coloured pencils, which I don’t usually do. But then I switched to brushing on a loose watercolour wash.
Unfortunately, the new A4 book I’m using for speed sketching doesn’t have very robust paper, so anything more light a light wash, bleeds through to the other side of the page. So my later sketches were just ink lines, with no colour.
I like this pure line approach, but next time I think I’ll do more of a tonal study.
If you’re interested in some speed sketching practice, check out this post for available sessions.
