365 Days of Urban Sketch People (Book 1)

365 Days of Urban Sketch People Book 1: December 1st to 11th

I’ve started my second 365 days of sketching people, and used a hand-bound book I’ve been carrying around the world, to start this new art challenge focused on Urban Sketching People.

Custom Small Urban Sketchbook

I made this little watercolour sketchbook back in 2021 when I was in the process of packing up our Turkey house to sell it. I was there alone and didn’t have much to do in the evenings, so I started watching YouTube tutorials and taught myself how to make hand-bound books.

Handmade urban sketch book — 12cm x 5cm urban sketch book and Red Lamy Pen with Fine Nib

Rather than throw away the non-slip kitchen shelf liner, I up-cycled it and used it as the book’s cover so that the book wouldn’t slip around while I was sketching.

Compact watercolour sketch books ideal for carrying around in my bag, and pulling out at a moment’s notice to sketch people. It’s small size means that it’s easy for my sketching to go unnoticed (vs. sitting there with a large sketchbook and feeling self-conscious).

I’ve carried this urban sketch book from Turkey, to England, to LA, to Portugal just waiting for the right time to start using it. It is one of my early books, and took me a lot of effort to master that coptic stitch, so I didn’t want to squander using it.

Urban Sketching Art Challenge

Urban Sketch People book with watercolour paper — Starting my Urban Sketching 365 day challenge

Now that I’ve started my new Kick in the Creatives 365 day challenge it seems like the ideal opportunity to wheel it out. I’ve recently completed a 365 day of sketching people—admittedly it took me about a year and a half to complete, but I did live in three countries in the interim, so at times I was a little distracted. But I saw it through to the end and spent weeks contemplating my next 365 day challenge.

The natural conclusion was to continue with the people theme (because that’s my favourite subject), but to take it to the next level by sketching people within their environment and only from life (nothing from photos or screens). This second challenge feels like a natural evolution to my sketching adventure. As well as capturing people from my daily life, I also plan to document people-sketching tutorials that I watch in order to build my skills.

Urban Sketching People – At the Cafe

Cafe culture is alive and well in Portugal, so there’s frequent opportunities to capture people sitting still and drinking their coffee. There’s also a lot of staring-at-phones going on, and as soon as I see this I know that I have a good opportunity of capturing a pose.

I started off by photographing these daily sketches with origami paper backgrounds so that I could look back at them and identify the sketches I did on the same day. But that approach didn’t last long!

Urban Sketching People -Waiting and Working

We don’t have a car, so I spend a lot of time on buses and trains, and waiting at stations and bus stops. I hate sitting there doing nothing. So I always have my sketchbook and pen with me to do a little sketch. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill little pages like this (another good reason to limit the size of your sketchbook).

Urban Sketching People -Learning from Tutorials

Some days I don’t have the opportunity of being out and about to sketch people live, and because I don’t want to miss a sketching day, I explore YouTube tutorials focused on urban sketching people.

Benefits of using a small scale sketch book for urban sketching

Limits the fear of a blank page. If you only have a small space to fill it seems less overwhelming.
It’s easy to carry around with you all the time. You only need one small book and one pen, and you have an effective urban sketching kit.
It’s easy to sketch without people realising they’re being sketched. It looks like you’re taking notes in a small notebook, not capturing their pose.

I created small sketchbooks for the joy of bookmaking, but didn’t think about how they’d get used. But I’m so pleased I have a small supply to capture my people sketches in. This one is filled with good quality watercolour paper, and I used my Red Lamy Safari with a fine nib, and a variety of Pilot G-tec pens for the sketches. The Lamy has waterproof Rohrer & Klingner “Thea” ink in it, and the Pilots have ink that has a gentle bleed it I leave it a while (but a more dramatic bleed if I paint on it straight away). Recently I’ve been experimenting with using pens that bleed, so that I can use it as shade and shadow.

This first round of sketches has filled this little book up already, so onto the next to continue my 365 days of urban sketching people.

Check out this post of the people sketching tutorials I did in December.

Check out the other urban sketches that ended up in this small format book.