Section of my Pétanque urban sketch
Day 61 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. A random collection of portraits and people sketches today.
Urban Sketching Kit
I had an appointment this afternoon, and rather than messing about in the studio to kill an hour, I headed to the north of the village for a bit of café sketching. Two of today’s sketches played on the concept of comparisons, and were thought-out (albeit briefly) and planned, whereas one of the sketches was an organic sketch that turned into a happy accident.
I only took a minimal sketching kit:
- A6 Sketchbook
- TWISBI Fountain Pen
- N89 Warm Grey Tombow brush pen for shading
This café has pretty good coffee, and there’s always a bunch of locals here. They tend to order one small drink and sit for a long while. When I was a waitress, we used to call this kind of customer campers or squatters, because they weren’t in a hurry to leave and you couldn’t get rid of them. Not ideal when you’re a waitress, but a perfect scenario when you’re an urban sketcher.
Urban Sketching at the Café
Old School vs. New School Sketch
A couple of tables away from me was an old guy transfixed by his newspapers, and I really wanted to capture him, because he had a really sketch-able bottom lip! I was mindful that I wanted to tell a story with this first sketch, but the people sitting nearby, and the most logical people to include in the scene, didn’t really add right level of interest. But then I spotted a younger guy over the other side of the restaurant, transfixed with his phone.
I thought the pair of them would make a perfect pairing. The same but opposite. Old School vs. New School. This comparison about how they consumed the news made for a much more interesting sketch than a random bunch of people.
I added tonal shading and text, and left the rest of the sketch to finish later. At home, I added spot colour on the reading devices, and a dynamic blue background, but left the figures as monochromatic.
Customer and Signs at the Café
I wanted to create an L-shaped layout of a tall figure besides a group of seated figures. I left these with just tonal shading, and was happy with this initial layer of composition, but I wanted to make the scene more interesting. This café is right beside a section of car park, a bus stop, and an industrial size rubbish bin, so I added them all into the scene.
I like the idea of the juxtaposition of people at leisure dressed in drab clothes, amid this flurry of brightly coloured man-made objects. I painted the objects in lifelike colours, but decided to keep the people with just tonal shading. This comparison of using tonal shaded people sketches is more dramatic than painting the clothing in varying shades of grey, brown, and black.
Old Lady Smoker
One of the things I don’t like about this café is that the outside patio attracts a lot of heavy smokers. If it’s a windy day, no matter where you sit, the café’s canopy keeps the smoke in and swirling about.
I finished my coffee and my sketch. Packed up my meagre urban sketch kit, and headed to my appointment. It was quite a successful urban sketching session – three sketches before I got smoked out of town!
Pétanque Urban Sketch
On the way home I went past the area where there were two games/matches of Pétanque being played. I took a seat and started sketching. There was one portly gent that was blissful to sketch, and I captured him three times, and I also sketched a couple of the other players.
I didn’t plan this composition, and didn’t think about the story I was trying to tell. These guys moved around a lot so the main challenge was just capturing a believable gesture in a really short space of time.
I like the spacing that happened organically between the figures, because it leaves just enough white space so the scene doesn’t feel cramped. It would have been great to have a full double page spread full of my hero in his red sweatshirt – but there was quite a crowd in this group, and it was difficult to get a clear view to sketch him.
When I got home, I finished off the sketch with watercolour, and added cut-out letters to spell out the name of the game. The white spacing at the top of the page lent itself very nicely to the placement of the letters. Another organic happy accident. Sometimes these things work, and sometimes they don’t.
Planned Compositions vs. Organic Happy Accidents
Today’s sketches taught me a useful lesson. Although the goal is to always plan my focal point and identify the story I want to tell with my sketch – before I start sketching. Sometimes, the situation dictates that you just have to start sketching or else you might miss the chance to captures some dynamic poses. In those cases, you have to hope that the composition and story evolve organically.
Sometimes it will. And sometimes not.
