Day 128 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. Today I sketched a couple of sunburned people at the café and added some poetic reportage to capture the scene. I also added coffee stained backgrounds.

Day 127 of sketching people in the waiting room of a government office in Faro. Experimenting with page layout by adding signs to help convey the location of the sketch, and filling negative space with some poetic reportage.

Day 126 of sketching people. Drawing is Free speed sketching event on zoom. Sketched a series of portraits, where every pose is the length of a music track. Simple ink lines and tonal sketching on 5x8cm pieces of watercolour paper. I also did Dylan Sara’s 10 minute sketch-along on YouTube.

Day 125 of sketching people at cafés in Tavira and Cabanas. Experimenting with page layout and composition, to see how well overlapping figures, and using V and L shapes layouts works.

Day 123 of sketching people at a local cafe. Added a bit of poetry to a couple of my sketches for a bit of reportage. Also continued my fasciation with biro portraits.

Day 122 of sketching people. Working my way through the second week of Dylan Sara’s facial features course which focused on sketching the nose. Which culminated in a coloured pencil portrait.

Day 121 of sketching people. Biro sketches with tonal shading from online resource images, and a couple of urban sketches at the cafe in ink and watercolour.

Day 120 of sketching people with a biro and adding tonal shading. Using photo references from Dylan Sara’s 10 at 10 live YouTube sketch along where he sketches portraits in 10 minutes.

Day 117-119 of sketching people with a fineliner. I did a lot of 2 minute sketches to put into practice the idea of simplifying lines and minimising the detail in people portraits.

Day 116 of sketching people. Experimenting with the Pilot V7 pen to create ink bleed for tonal shading on monochromatic people sketches. Exploring how to use the Envelope Method to map out simple shapes for a strong page composition and layout.

Day 112 of sketching people. Drawing is Free speed sketching event on zoom. And completing a sketch study sequence, which was another exercise in speed sketching.

Day 111 of sketching people. Working my way through the first week of Dylan Sara’s facial features course which focused on sketching the eye. Sketching eyes in ink, and a portrait in watercolour pencil.

Day 110 of sketching people. Drawing is Free speed sketching event on zoom. Sketched a series of portraits, where every pose is the length of a music track. Simple ink lines and tonal sketching with a little spot watercolour.

Day 109 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. An unfortunate trip to the hospital, but filling the waiting time with sketches.

Day 105 of sketching during a day our flight out of Lille. I sketched people before our flight and during our flight. A good end to our trip, with some pleasing people sketches completed.

Day 102 of sketching during a day trip to Brugge. Looking at the impact of negative space and how to create a strong sketch of a person using a triangular shape as the key compositional element.

In Ghent for day 101 of sketching people at the flea market and captured a bit of reportage sketching at the cafe, illustrated with a short poem about their dormant cell phones.

In Paris for day 98, 99, and 100 of urban sketching people. Experimenting how to manipulate the line and colour on a page to create a sketch that has a clear visual path and a strong focal point.

Day 97 of sketching people at Faro Airport while waiting for a delayed flight to Paris. Experimenting with ink lines with spot colour, and adding blocks of colour behind the people sketches.

A quick people sketch at the cafe, and swatching a muted shade of green, that morphed into a beautiful skin tone shade using natural sienna, cobalt turquoise light, and opera pink. I also ruminate on how I sketch people and how they see themselves, and how those are two very different things when I sketch my version of reality.

Day 95 of sketching people. Today I sketched groups at the monthly Sol de Inverno event in Tavira. I used a different easel today, made out of an A5 watercolour book cover, and it worked really well.

Day 94 of sketching people at a live sketching event at a local art gallery. I faced the dilemma of wanting to add colour to my sketches but having to wait for the page to dry before I could begin another sketch.

Day 93 of urban sketching people at Tavira Plaza. Ink and Tonal Shading sketches on location, and discovered that if I leave the Tombow water soluable ink to “cure”, you can add watercolour on top of it and it doesn’t bleed or spread.

Day 91 of urban sketching people at the cafe. Sketched onto a watercolour paper background of coffee stains. I also prepped some page for my next cafe sketching trip, experimenting with different ways to apply the coffee and vary the patterns created.