Urban sketch at the cafe with conversation

Day One Hundred and Seventy-One of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 174 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour, at the cafe at the end of my street. I’ve been sketching over these past couple of months, but because of my computer issues I haven’t got around to blogging my activity – so now I’m playing catch-up.

Sketching at the Cafe and Capturing Conversation

Most of the times I just like to sketch people, but occasionally when people are being especially vocal, it’s good to add snippets of conversation to the sketch to add an additional layer of intrigue and interest.

I met lots of urban sketchers at this year’s urban sketching symposium who incorporate conversations into their sketches, and each one seems to have a slightly different approach. For example, Dan Archer has built his sketching activity around interview interaction with the people he sketches, but I much prefer a gentler approach…the subtle art of eavesdropping.

When people are in a public space, there’s no expectation of privacy. This goes for sketching them, but also true if they’re talking loud enough to be heard. Sometimes the words I overhear aren’t worthy of being captures, and I turn a deaf ear to what is being said. But sometimes the conversations are just another interesting layer to the person’s character, and so they become an integral layer of the sketch.

One of the sketch elements that Dan Archer shared with me was that not all speech bubbles have to have speech-tails pointing to the speaker, and instead to use overlapping speech bubbles to reduce the number. I tried this approach in the sketch, and it works really well to reduce the sketch clutter.

What Inspired me to Sketch?

As well as the conversation, what really drew me towards today’s sketch subject was the way his had was resting on his knee, with a couple of his fingers folded under, and also the slumped posture of his body gesture. Each time I sketch, there has to be something that grabs my attention and piques my interest – without that level of intrigue, inspiration evades me.

Colour Harmony

I wanted to inject a layer of colour harmony into my sketch, so I added a bit of a border around the speech bubbles, and used the same colour to illustrate the sketch subject’s name. I chose the yellow shade that I’d used in the chair, to create that feeling of connection between the sketch and words.