Photo: Drawing is Free zoom sketches

Day Eight of my 365 Day Sketch Challenge

Continuing with day eight of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour.

Drawing Earthsworld Challenge

I tried a new approach to my Drawing Earthsworld Challenge from Facebook today. I’ve been sketching these daily portraits on half a page of my Hahnemühle A6 landscape sketchbook (9cm wide x 11cm tall), and then adding text on the other half of the page.

But then I thought about the fact that I very rarely go out to draw portraits when I’m urban sketching, I realised it would be much more beneficial to start drawing smaller sized portraits, as this practice is more relevant for drawing urban sketched faces.

I started by drawing a smaller sketch (5cm wide x 7cm tall) using a Uniball Eye micro pen, and then did my usual larger sketch with a Staedtler pigment liner 0.05.

It probably would have been better to use the finer pen for the smaller portrait, and the wider Uniball pen for the larger portrait, so will give that a try next time around. Although, to be honest, I do like the look of the darker lines on the smaller portrait.

I’m also not a fan of the hatching I did on the larger sketch. Won’t be doing that again.

Simplifying your Lines for Portraits

When you’re working on a smaller scale there’s a real need to simplify the lines you use, and the complexity of your watercolour layers.

It’s this effective simplification that I’m currently on the hunt to develop. I wasn’t that successful in today’s experiment, I think because I drew the smaller portrait first, before I drew the larger one. A more effective approach would be to draw the larger portrait, and look at the lines that can be simplified for the smaller portrait.

After you’ve drawn a new portrait, you’ve familiarised yourself with the lines and the tonal ranges. And any mistakes you’ve made with the first portrait, can be corrected with the second attempt.

What Size are Urban Sketch Portraits?

I looked back on some recent urban sketches where people are the main focus, and there’s a few sketched objects included to set the scene. The heads are no bigger than 5cm square. So my goal is to start working towards sketching heads with these smaller dimensions.

The more aligned my practice sketches are with my real life sketching activities, the better it will be to build some muscle memory for sketching all the features, faces, and hair, as simply and quickly as possible.

This approach is something I can integrate into my live portrait sketching sessions. Recently, the more time I have to sketch, the larger the portrait I create. So today’s brainwave to focus on practicing what I aim to perfect (related to portrait size) is obvious, so not sure why I hadn’t thought of that before.

Drawing is Free Live Sketching Event

I attended my first 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. I started off using ink lines and watercolour, but simplified my approach by switching to tonal studies.

After a few songs, I realised I needed to set my stopwatch so I could keep track of the time, to make sure I have enough time to do the ink sketches and fill in some tonal values with watercolour.

It’s a fast moving session, with no much time between tracks, so you really need to be on the ball with all your materials – or else you’re scrabbling and losing precious sketching seconds. (Note to self: get your watercolours organised better beforehand!)

There were over 400 artists sketching on the call, and there was even an after-school sketching club in attendance, which was fabulous. I like this one-hour speed sketching class format, and will definitely be joining again.

To find out about all the live portrait sketching events I’ve collated information about, visit this portrait sketching page.