Riding the Tube with No Pants Sketch from Photos

Day Thirty-Three of Sketching People

Continuing with day 33 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Was great to do some urban sketching people yesterday, but today it’s back to the studio for some sketching from videos and photos.

Sketching from Photos

I hadn’t realised that there’s an annual London Tube event, of riding the tube with no trousers on. Understandable in summer – but winter in London? No, I’d be keeping my trousers on!

Don’t know how this popped up in one of my social media streams, but I was happy it did. And I got lost down a rabbit hole of photos of the 2026 event, to find some scenes (and bums) I wanted to sketch.

I tweaked both of the sketches I created by changing the background or replacing the people in the scene from other scenes, and I also changed the colour of the clothing and hair.

I really like the look of the sketch below. With the pencil background, neutral white and grey clothing, and colourful underwear. I wanted the focus to be on the underwear, so I used my vibrant set of colours (Cobalt Turquoise Lights, Opera Pink and Hansa Yellow Light). They all got the same colour hair so that it wasn’t a distracting element.

I really need to start planning my figure sketches a little better. I always start sketching the head, and if that is drawn too big, then I run out of room for the feet. I’m going to have to figure out a quick way to do this, so that it doesn’t impede my naturally fast approach to urban sketching.

I do like sketching from photos. It’s good practice. But now that I’m getting more comfortable at urban sketching people live (like in my sketches yesterday) – the more I realise I like the looser approach that comes from sketching fast. When you sketch from photos, there isn’t that same sense of urgency that comes from sketching a real life person in a real life setting.

Disclaimer: I don’t know if the changes I made to my sketches from the sources images is enough so that I haven’t contravened any copyright rules. But if you are the owner of some of the source photos, and you’re not happy that I’ve used the photos as inspiration to sketch my images, please just let me know and I’ll take these images off my website immediately.

10 Minute YouTube Sketch with Dylan

Another day of sketching Dylan’s 10 minute portrait of Vandana Shiva. Rather than opting for an ink sketch, I decided to do a line drawing with a watercolour pencil. But during the sketch I got distracted and started blending the watercolour lines for some tonal shading. Then I ran out of time.

But I wanted to finish the sketch, so I kept going with it. I really like this blended watercolour pencil look. It has a softness to it. It seems like watercolour pencil is more controllable than watercolour. You sketch a solid line, and then are able to blend it easily and get it to go where you need it to go. Whereas with regular watercolour, there’s more water in the mix, and therefore, less control.

My intention with this challenge was to only focus on sketching people in ink and watercolour. I wanted to put strict guardrails on my art material selection, so I was less likely to venture down too many creative avenues. But I’ve realised that I don’t want to limit my creative adventures if I’m being drawn to using just watercolour pencils.

Experimenting with Different Art Materials and Styles

I’m so pleased I’ve been experimenting with different art materials. It’s so easy to get reliant on one way of sketching. My preferred sketching method is to sketch directly in ink, and add watercolour.

But yesterday when I was urban sketching, I sketched in pencil first, and then inked the lines and added watercolour. And earlier this week, I did a session of blind contour ink lines experimenting with different pens.

I do like how watercolour pencils act differently than regular watercolour, so will be experimenting with them a little more (I have plenty of them – time to get them working for a living!!)