People in Urban Sketching

Some urban sketchers focus on sketching buildings and street scenes, and the people are there to add ambiance and a sense of scale. But I’d much prefer to sketch people as the main focal point.

The challenge is how to layout a sketch page when all you’re sketching is people. How do you anchor them to the page and make the layout look pleasing, without having to draw too much of the scene around them.

I’m on day 340 of second sketch challenge prompted by Kick in the Creatives – 365 days of Urban Sketching People. It’s taken me until now to realise that I should be focusing just as much attention on the page layout as I do to developing my skills for sketching people. (Better late than never).

Sketch Layouts in an A5 sketchbook

Just recently I’ve been thinking about the end result of a page in my A5 sketchbook, before I start sketching – rather than just winging it! Basically, putting a little bit of planning into my sketching process.

1st Attempt: Ink and Watercolour People at a Café using Overlapping Elements

It feels like the key to a successful page layout of various subjects is to overlap them, so there’s a visual connection, even though there wasn’t a physical connection between the subjects.

I like that this was a mix for back, front and side profile view. I also diverged from the reality of the actual colour palette, and created some visual cohesion between the different subjects using the greens and blues.

2nd Attempt: Ink and Watercolour People at a Café/Bar

Each of the individual groups of people were overlapping and that’s what motivated me to sketch them. They were all engrossed in their own little world, in a middle of a noisy and busy bar.

So I didn’t want to overlap all of the subjects together. Instead, I connected them with this border outline, which I think works really well.

They were all front and side-profile views, and I didn’t get too fixated on the colour harmony for the page, which helps to establish them as three separate group elements on the page.

3rd Attempt: Ink and Watercolour People at a Café

I knew I was doing a little running around today, so I thought it would be a great idea to create a visual journal of some of the elements:

• Tree at the golf course
• Two ladies at the Coffee Spot café
• My new pair of glasses

The tree and the people had a slight overlap, and those two elements work well. But the glasses just look odd and oversized. If I had a do-over for this. I think I would have switched the position of the people and glasses, and drawn the glasses a lot smaller and positioned them amid some text.

When you’re experimenting with new sketching styles and techniques, not everything is going to be successful. But even with this fail at the third attempt, I still learnt something. So it’s still a win!

Sketch Layouts in a Small A6 sketchbook

I always have two sketchbooks on the go. The A6 one is great for always carrying around incase I have time to kill. Because of its smaller size, the layout conundrum isn’t so important, but I think it’s an easier playground for experimenting with different layout ideas.

At the ATM

I was sitting in an empty café waiting for customers so I could sketch them. But it was a really hot day, and nobody visited. But then I realised how popular the neighbouring ATM machine was, and that I had a captive audience for a couple of minutes for each visit.

I sketched the machine once with the first customer, and then just added the back profile of the following four customers. The ink blot was a leaky fountain pen, not an artistic addition.

I think the scene could have benefited from some space around the outside, or even a partial border.

At the Market

I didn’t want to bother sketching the entire tables of these two Lagos stallholders, instead I just focused on them and a little bit of their produce.

I think this layout still works as two separate stallholders, but could probably have benefited from a loose, expressive, or suggestive background of the market hall to tie these two together and anchor them in a sense of place.

The scene could also have been enhanced if I’d overlapped the two figures to create a visual connection between them.

To Thumbnail or Not To Thumbnail …

I think I may be coming around to the idea about the value of creating a thumbnailing a sketch before I start drawing.

But the trouble is, I don’t usually know what I’m going to sketch, because it depends of who shows up, and who will stay still long enough for me to capture their presence.