Composite urban sketch of people

Day One Hundred and Sixteen of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 116 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Quick sketches at the cafe using a fine liner for sketching and tonal shading from ink bleed, and exploring how to get a strong page composition with simple shapes.

Exploring Tonal Shading from Ink Bleed

I’ve amassed a big selection of fine liners over the years, but once I discovered how great fountain pens are to sketch with, the fine liners have been languishing on my art shelf – the Billy No Mates of art supplies. But I experimented with a water soluble pen this week to use ink and water to create bleed as shading for sketching people.

I loved the end result of those tonal sketches, and it got me thinking about how many other pens I had in my collection that could create a nice bleed. I like sketching with black ink, so I got all my black fine liners out and ended up with four pens which created varying levels of bleed. They also created different tonal shades, ranging from cool and warm greys, to a blue-grey.

The first example in the test above is the Pilot V7 pure ink pen. It has a nice nib to write with, and created a subtle light grey bleed. So I put this pen in my urban sketching kit, along with a water brush and some kitchen roll for dabbing excess ink or water off the page.

Urban Sketching at the Café

I sketched the couple with the computer first and then the other couple. I was planning on sketching another couple with the same size proportions, but I felt the composition would have looked a bit safe and uninteresting – a little too balanced, so I sketched a single figure a bit larger.

Looking at it now, I think the page layout would have benefited from an additional figure to create a stronger L shape – as if the L was titled forward, and the long part of the L was a row of sketches on the top horizontal lines of people. Another option would have been to sketch the computer couple larger so the elbow of the guy connected to the single figure.

Planning a Page Layout for People Sketches

It’s difficult to plan people sketches. You never know who’s going to show up or leave, or who is going to inspire you to sketch them. I watched a Koosje Koene video the other day, and she talked about “Don’t plan too much in advance, let the drawing unfold shape by shape”. But Koosje tends to paint a lot of scenes with people that have background and foreground elements, whereas I like sketching pages that have multiple vignette scenes of people in them. My current approach is to start sketching organically, and hoping a pleasing page layout with evolve.

But I think it’s possible to find a middle ground between planning a page and just letting it evolve. And that’s to think of a broad compositional shapes, like an L or a V, before you start sketching, and then fit your sketches along those key lines to create a strong and intentional shape on your page. Then you can use line weight, colour, or tonal value to create a focal point within that shape – for example, along the small stem of the L shape, or where the V shape or L shape lines join.

Use the Envelope Method to Plan your Layout

Something to play around with for sure, especially if it means not getting too hung up about planning a page in too much detail. When you decide on a broad shapes, you can let the rest of your page layout evolve. So a good starting point would be to use a version of the envelope method to map out the key shape, and then develop your sketching activity along those key lines (rather than sketching within the lines – which is the standard approach for the envelope method).

Using a watercolour pencil lightly would enable the lines to disappear into the sketch, or you can lift them off the paper with water at the end of your sketching activities.