Urban Sketch at the Tavira Market

Day Thirty-Two of Sketching People

Continuing with day Thirty-Two of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. A beautiful sunny day today, so went to Tavira Market, and stood around to sketch people quickly in pencil.

Urban Sketches of People in Pencil

I usually sketch directly in ink, but because I don’t usually sketch standing up, I needed the safety blanket of the pencil lines first. I really liked how they turned out. Especially the loose feel to the lines, because I was sketching so quickly.

(I photographed these in the bright sunshine before I inked them, so the exposure is a little odd).

I did contemplate just leaving these as pencil sketches, or maybe just adding some tonal shading. But I couldn’t resist adding ink and watercolour.

Urban Sketches of People in Ink and Watercolour

Outside the market, in my favourite little cafe, I sat in the sun to enjoy a coffee, and was planning to sketch some fellow cafe patrons, but there was only a couple of other people, and their postures weren’t that exciting to sketch. So instead, I inked my market sketches. Then when I got home, I finished the sketches with watercolour.

These sketches give the impression that the stalls were quite busy. But there seemed to be more stall holders than shoppers at Tavira market today, maybe because it was mid-week. So I had to hang around at each stall for a while, and then kept adding new shoppers to the sketch, as they wandered into the scene.

I especially liked how I added the watercolour to the scene below. The background elements were all painted in neutral colours so as not to detract from the people, who I wanted to be the focal point. Then I used a primary colour palette of yellow, green, and blue, varying the shades to make these lighter, darker, or desaturated. I painted the guys bag red, to create some cohesion with the display of tomatoes.

On the following double page A6 spread, I sketched three separate scenes, but it looked a bit of a jumble. So I added a frame around the each of the scenes, to help to depict that they were separate vignettes.

More yellow and green coats in these scenes, primarily because I wanted to complement the pile of tomatoes that seemed to be the focal point of every sketch.

Lots of bubble coat out today, even though it was bright sunshine. Most people didn’t know I was sketching them, even though I was standing there with a book and pencil in my hand. But I did get a side-eye from the old grumpy guy with the hat. So I looked down, until he looked away, then keep stealing glances to finish him off.

Urban Sketching Dynamic Poses

My goal today was to try and capture people with dynamic poses, but so many people were just standing there, with equal weight on both legs, so their stances were straight up and down, with level shoulders and hips. This kind of static stance is really boring to sketch, and it makes a scene look really uneventful.

But I kept prowling around the market, and was finally rewarded with some shoppers doing repetitive actions, like inspecting and picking fruit and vegetables.

There was a lot of beautiful red tomatoes on the stalls today, so when I painted the clothing, I used a lot of greens to complement the scene.

It’s been a while since I visited Tavira market, and I think next time will have to be on a Saturday, when it’s usually a lot busier. Then there’s more chance of dynamic poses and more interactions going on.