Urban Sketch and Poem

Day Thirty-Nine of Sketching People

Continuing with day 39 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Out and about for a quick urban sketch at the Tavira Plaza Mall to capture a scene from the waiting room, and a portrait from Drawing Earthsworld Challenge from Facebook.

I’ve had enough of naming these daily sketch challenges the same name, so going forward I’m giving these posts more dynamic titles, but I’m still going to keep track of which day of the challenge I’m on. I was going to go back on the old posts and rename them … but life’s too short! 

Urban Sketching in Tavira

I fully intended to stay on location and do lots of people sketches today, but it was raining heavily and there was a power cut at the Tavira Plaza, and we were all plunged into darkness. Then it started to get cold. So I made do with this one portrait, and decided to get an uber home.

I was sitting just a seat away from this lady in a waiting room, and I had to keep looking at the contours of her face to capture them correctly. I kept expecting her to catch me staring, but she was so engrossed in doom scrolling that she didn’t even notice me. Her thumb was repetitively swiping up and down her phone screen, and I wish I’d started the sketch further over onto the page so I could have sketched the hands and phone in full.

Identifying the Focal Point

Initially I identified the focal point as her face. I loved her down-turned lip. She looks like she’d just sucked on a lemon! But then while I was sketching, I realised the focal point needed to be her hands and doom-scrolling. Because that seemed to be the cause of her sour expression. But because I sketch directly in ink, I just kept going with my first composition.

(A couple of days ago I did an urban sketch of an old guy eating a bag of crips, and I made the same error of sketching him too far over to the edge of the page, and I didn’t have enough room to sketch his bags of snacks.)

I’m thinking that I need to start leaving space all the way around a figure, that way if I decide to change the focal point of a sketch, I have enough room to highlight it successfully.

Adding Text to Sketches

I’d placed the figure over to the left hand side of the page, because I knew I wanted to add some text on the right hand side. While I was sketching I didn’t know what my text was going to be about. But during the sketch I realised that the story was all about the doom scrolling and the impact on this lady’s emotional reaction. So I ended up writing a short poem.

DOOM Scrolling: Your Thumb is working overtime. Your mouth is in a downturn line. Your constant need for viral news? Gives your head and heart the blues.

Social Commentary Poems

I like this method of adding poems with a tinge of social commentary, to my sketches. I’ve seen other urban sketchers adding snippets of overheard conversations to their people sketches. I’ve also done that in some of my previous sketches, but the observations seem to come across as forced, trite, or immaterial.

But I’m finding that when I write these short poems they compliment the sketch by adding extra context. Somehow they seem more meaningful. I’m not sure if this is the text path I’m committing to. I’m experimenting with different approaches. But one thing is for sure, I want text to play a key role in my sketching practice.

Text with sketches can play multiple roles, and in this sketch I wanted the text to add some context and evoke an emotional reaction to the scene. Let’s face it, if you have a phone, and you’re on social media, do you fall victim to a bit doom scrolling?!

Drawing Earthsworld Challenge

I had a go at this lady’s portrait from the Drawing Earthsworld Challenge on Facebook today. I really liked the overall shape of her hair, and that’s what inspired me to take a different approach to sketching this challenge.

I used the Envelope Method – which consists of sketching the outline before venturing in towards the details. Although, rather than using the series of straight interconnected lines I saw in a recent Envelope Method video, I used my usual line sketching style.

Not Intentionally. I just forgot about switching to straight lines. The concept is that you create the envelope with the straight lines, and then soften them as you refine your portrait.

This approach to sketching is meant to help to get the perspective and construction of there overall shape anchored down, before you get side-tracked on placing the features.